


The Harvard Hypocrite

by carryonstarkid, Heavenward (PreludeInZ)



Series: TAG DeviantAU [4]
Category: Thunderbirds
Genre: Arguing, Brothers, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Expansive description of a lasagna for some reason, Fighting, Gen, General Scrapping, Withdrawal, potentially heartbreaking, something about doors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 29,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5100599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carryonstarkid/pseuds/carryonstarkid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/PreludeInZ/pseuds/Heavenward
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A sequel to intelligentgravity's A Known Deviant, which has a sordid backstory of its own.</p><p>Let's suggest that Gordon and John are more alike than they are different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Known Deviant](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5091371) by [intelligentgravity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intelligentgravity/pseuds/intelligentgravity). 



>   
>  Edited by [ScribeOfRED](http://archiveofourown.org/users/scribeofred)  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> with great love and affection to our co-conspirator, [intelligentgravity](http://archiveofourown.org/users/intelligentgravity/pseuds/intelligentgravity), for the cover art. Her tumblr with more of her fantastic art is [here](http://intelligentgravity.tumblr.com/)!  
> 

* * *

  

* * *

The apartment above his is an apartment where parties happen. And before now, John's always disdained them, hated the way the noise felt like it disrupted his entire routine. It's _Harvard_ , for god's sake. Virgil is visiting him, at _Harvard_ , because it's spring break and John's a bit of a show-off. And Harvard is worth showing off.

Gordon's in town too. Because Virgil invited him, not because John did. Virgil's tendency to try and make nice between the older and younger halves of the family is challenging. John had nodded politely along over dinner, hearing the news about Gordon. Gordon's settled down. Gordon's swimming at the collegiate level and excelling, as he would. Gordon's got a 3.4 GPA, which is probably down to the fact that he's enrolled in some relatively nameless school out on the west coast.

Returning to John's apartment, Virgil had heard the party upstairs. John had apologized for the noise. His younger brother had rolled his eyes and smirked.

"Well, we're gonna crash it, J-bird," Virgil had explained patiently. "And we will take a picture and we will send it to Dad, because photographic evidence of you actually interacting with other human beings will probably get him off my case about how you're turning into a misanthropic hermit."

There'd been some elbowing, some coaxing, and after John had ducked into the bathroom and downed a pair of aspirin, finally he'd agreed.

And actually, it's not that bad an idea.

John's not much for parties, but once they're in the door, it turns out this one's not so bad. Virgil's at the center of a group of people arguing loudly about art, and John's found some students of the harder sciences. He feels sharp, wickedly clear and witty and clever, and these are people who laugh at the kind of jokes he finds funny, about engineers, physicists, and biochemists walking into bars. The glass in his hand empties and refills more times than he notices. It doesn't seem as though it matters.

Across the room, someone crossing behind him into the kitchen dangles an empty whiskey bottle by the neck and remarks to Virgil, "Man. Your brother sure can knock 'em back."

And that's Virgil's first warning, because it's absolutely untrue. John's a lightweight. John nurses a drink over the course of an evening, John drinks the sort of thing he has to savor, and it's one of the only things he has in common with their father. Looking at his brother across the room, animated and bright-eyed and with a glass that's too full of something amber with ice in it, Virgil gets his first, uneasy rumbling of anxiety.

"S'cuse me. This isn't a concession, by the way, because you're still completely and totally wrong about the Communist Manifesto and should be ashamed of yourself—but excuse me."

Virgil crosses the room to the little knot of physics students, who have been drawn together by the fifth fundamental force in the universe—the sort that attracts nerds to one another at parties. The ice in John's glass chimes softly against the sides and Virgil puts a hand on his brother's wrist, gentle restraint. His skin above the band of his watch is startlingly hot. "How many's that been, John?"

"Hmm? Dunno. Three. S'fine."

"Four," someone corrects, and Virgil's hit with a swooping rush of stomach-dropping panic, simultaneously grateful and horrified that someone's been counting. They haven't even been here more than an hour.

John laughs and it's unsettling and _wrong_. Virgil decides they're leaving, back to John's place.

"C'mon, John. Party's over."

* * *

Gordon's party is not like John's in that it is louder, brighter, and significantly more _fun_ , as things without John often are. It's a familiar atmosphere for him, even if he is three thousand miles away from the place he now calls home, because everything's the same. There's a certain sort of smoggy stench that seeps into the walls and ceilings of all the most partied-out apartments. There's a certain sort of laughter that comes with bad drinks and a good time. Gordon's _good_ at this. He _understands_ this.

And he's got pocket aces.

Clouds clutch at light and Gordon's stopped trying to keep track of what everyone's smoking. _He's_ not smoking any of it, which is really the most important part. The guys at the table all have beers within arms’ reach, but Gordon's got water, claiming to be the designated driver for a girl who doesn't exist. He could probably get away with one drink—maybe two—but once he starts, he doesn't stop. He's not like everyone else in that way. _John_ , though. Now _there's_ a guy who can't drink, and he'll be the first one to roll his eyes if Gordon decides to go back to the apartment tonight with liquor on his lips.

So it's pocket aces in the dining room instead of beer pong in the foyer. So it's water instead of alcohol. So it's a bunch of tight assed Harvard Law students who _think_ they know what a poker face looks like, instead of the gorgeous blonde playing darts in the opposite corner.

And then it's his phone, buzzing away in his pocket.

When he stands from the table, the protests are plentiful, and Gordon just rolls his eyes. There's already an ace on the table. No way anyone's got a better hand, so he flips his cards over and watches as everyone moans. They're all taking a drink by the time Gordon answers the call.

It's Virgil on the other end, but Gordon can't hear him until he steps into a bathroom. Jesus _Christ_ , does anyone under the age of twenty-five know how to clean an apartment? “Y'know, when I said I was going out for the night, I didn't think I'd have a babysitter checking up on—”

“Gordon,” Virgil says. Gordon's heard his own name plenty of times, sometimes as a call, usually as a warning, but never has he heard it as a plea. That, more than anything else, is Gordon's first warning. “You were taking a first aid class this semester, right?”

There's a pause on both ends—or, well. As much of a pause as there can be. The muffled music on Gordon's end suddenly seems entirely too loud and there's definitely _something_ happening on the opposite end of the line. He takes a moment to swallow the heart in his throat before he asks, “Why?”

“I think I need some—” Another pause as Virgil pulls away. Gordon can't quite make out what he's saying, but he hears John's name, over and over and over, before Virgil turns back, more urgent than before. “Gordon, _get over here_. Now.”

“What's going—?”

“ _Shit_. Gordon. I'm not screwing around, here—I need you.”

It's not very often Virgil shows his hand, but when he does, it's because he's completely given up on it being of any use to him. There's no game in the older brother's voice—no bluff—so Gordon hangs up, takes a jacket that isn't his from a hook in the doorway, and slips away from the party that's better than John's.


	2. Chapter 2

If he had to guess at the volume of what he's thrown up into the kitchen sink, it had maybe been more than four drinks. Maybe four and a half. Probably that's a bad sign. Probably the bigger sign is that he'd barely felt a thing. John _hates_ to be drunk. Hates it. He'll tolerate a mild buzz, he doesn't mind relaxing with a glass of Scotch after a particularly taxing day, but he hates to get drunk.

Four shots of whiskey probably should've done a bit more than it had.

But the aspirin in the bathroom isn't aspirin and he knows that and maybe he's overdone it a little. Virgil doesn't and Virgil won't, but right now Virgil's hovering in the kitchen doorway, gnawing his lower lip and staring in a way that prickles over John's skin, cold and electric.

John's lowered himself to the kitchen floor, nominally to catch his breath and make the world stop spinning more than it should be. But the chill from the tile beneath his hands, the seat of his jeans, his long, outstretched legs—it's seeping into him like water and he hadn't realized just how warm he felt. His fingers fumble for a moment, at the top button of his collared shirt, undoing it.

"Christ," Virgil mutters, and the hand that reaches out to pull John off the floor jerks back when it touches his skin. "Holy _hell_. You're burning up, John."

Virgil's ticked over from mild anxiety into proper concern, and he crouches down on the kitchen floor, looming a little, even kneeling down. Virgil's built like a brick wall. John feels especially narrow and thin as his brother's hands catch his face, his fingertips probe beneath his jaw for the throb of his pulse. This is rapid, thready and John can feel it ratcheting further upward against the pressure of Virgil's fingertips against his throat. Virgil's hands are cool like the tile floor beneath him.

"Johnny, you all right?" Virgil asks, even though his brown eyes are narrowed with the knowledge that John is very clearly not all right. "Okay. Oh, man, okay. Jesus, d'you think...do you know the people upstairs? Shit, we shouldn't have crashed that party. _God_. God _damn_ it. Oh man. Okay. Someone thought it would be funny to slip you something. Those fucking asshole nerds you were talking to, probably. John? C'mon, let's get you on the couch, just—lie down for a bit. I'll open some windows, get you some air. Probably it'll pass. Okay?"

"F-ff. Fine. Okay." That's good. That'll work perfectly, blame the damn party. He's slipped up, made a miscalculation of some kind, but it's fine. It'll pass. He's made this mistake before, the sort that sets his heart racing more than a little too fast and has him dropping everything to do every piece of homework he has available, to organize and reorganize and colour-code his notes, anything to eat up the mad, burning surge of energy inside him. It'll pass, it'll pass, it always passes. He's fine. He'll be fine.

"Okay. Good, okay. You're all right. Right? C'mon, J, on your feet."

Easy enough. Virgil's strong as an ox, takes most of John's weight as he shifts himself onto his knees, starts to stand. Virgil abruptly takes the rest of John's weight as the blood rushes to his head and the entire world blinks out.

But he makes it to the couch. Obviously, because that's where he is next, curled on his side with his hand beneath his face and with his limbs tremoring. His face and his palms are damp and when he pushes his fingers through his hair he finds it's heavy with sweat. His shirt's been undone the rest of the way, the thin white t-shirt he's wearing beneath it uncomfortable, clinging and similarly damp, jersey cotton.

"John?" The voice is Virgil's, but it sounds like it belongs to a much younger version of Virgil than the one sitting on the edge of the coffee table next to the couch. "John, hey, Johnny, you back?"

He wants it to be words, but what happens instead is a hitching gasp of breath, and then it's like his lungs didn't get the memo and he has to _think_ about breathing. But he's fine. John's got it, he's fine. In and out, it's just breathing. He can keep breathing, he's fine. It definitely doesn't merit the look of stark terror on Virgil's face.

There's a sharp, shave-and-a-haircut knock on the door. Virgil practically melts and his hand grabs John's shoulder, gives it a short, anxious squeeze. "Gordon. Okay. Just—stay there, John, hang on a minute, okay? Gordon'll know what to do."

John manages what ends up being a weak, wheezing laugh at Virgil's heels on their way to the front door. Because since when does _Gordon_ know what to do about anything?

* * *

Jane Yu, a girl on his club team who had been on her way to winning States. Talented. Fast. Probably would have made it to the Olympic trials if she hadn’t passed out during one of their meets. If she hadn’t stopped halfway through their conversation and turned cold when Gordon caught her. Jane probably would have made it really far if she hadn’t been sharing needles in the locker room. If she hadn’t gotten sick. She was kicked off the team one week later.

Missy Jones, some girl in the bathroom at one of the countless parties. Gordon had been the only volunteer to drive her to the hospital when she had collapsed into bloody noses and shaky hands. Looking back on it, he realizes this had probably been a _mistake_ considering the fact that he can’t actually _remember_ doing it. They’re lucky he didn’t kill them both.

Derek Richter, a C-list movie star with the ego of an A-lister. It had been a premier, but Gordon can’t remember which one. All of them have since faded into one long red carpet, but he _does_ remember the look on Derek’s face when he couldn’t breathe anymore. He _does_ remember the sound of Derek’s strangled breaths.

These are the ghosts that follow him. These are the ghosts that howl and moan all night long, keeping him awake, and when Gordon walks into John’s apartment, the oldest looks horribly, hauntingly pale.

So he asks the question he always has to ask. “What’s the situation?”

Gordon’s through the door before Virgil can even pull it all the way open. John’s shaking and Gordon can see the sweat from across the room as it beads up along his brother’s forehead. There’s a special sort of way Gordon’s heart races when he walks into scenes like this one, and his feet have no choice but to follow. It’s not a sprint across hardwood, but it’s close, and then the second youngest is at the second oldest’s side.

Virgil had been right when he had asked about the first aid course. Gordon _has_ spent a semester learning the basics, but that’s not why he knows how to find a pulse. Hearts are fickle things, and finding a pulse is one of those things that you _should_ know before you _need_ to know it. Two fingers, below the jaw, sixty seconds.

It’s a _long_ sixty seconds.

“We crashed a party,” Virgil admits. “Upstairs. We just wanted to—well, not _we_. Christ, John didn’t even want to go. Shit. _Shit_. I think they slipped him something and I can’t tell if he’s gotten better or worse.”

Nice. Real nice. Class act, these Harvard _gentleman_. First they try to cheat at cards and now they’re drugging drinks. Gordon’s been on this campus all of five hours and already he’s decided that he doesn’t want to spend another minute here for as long as he lives.

Virgil’s still rambling on at Gordon’s back, and Gordon’s only half listening, just in case he says something useful. “He puked a lot of it up, I think, but he had a lot to drink—has he said anything to you about drinking more?”

Gordon doesn’t point out that John hasn’t said much of anything to him at all. Gordon’s too busy counting heartbeats against his watch, an act made tremendously harder by the fact that John’s heart won’t pick a steady beat. Bad sign. If anyone’s heart beats with strict, defined certainty, it’s John’s.

“Hey, uh. Virge?” he says, cutting off the anxious babble of a brother caught between. “There was a fire extinguisher out in the hallway, right?”

Virgil pauses, then looks to John as if maybe he had been aflame the whole time and Virgil had just missed it. Then, when he’s fairly confident that isn’t the case, he turns back to Gordon. “I really don’t think fire safety is our biggest—”

“Go see if there’s a defibrillator hanging on the wall next to it, just in case.”

“A defibr—Gordon, what the _hell_?”

“Just in _case_ , Virgil.”

Because John’s pulse is too high. Because his professors have told him it’s much harder to be overly cautious than it is to be under. Because he’d rather have it near than far. Better safe than sorry—the rule all first responders know in their soul.

It’s John who answers next. “You’re being dramatic,” he mutters.

There are about a hundred things Gordon could say in response, but he won’t, because clearly John’s had a pretty shit night and additionally, if things _do_ go south, Gordon doesn’t want his last words with John to be a fight. “Your _pulse,_ ” he says instead, “is _literally_ out of control. I’m not sure we shouldn’t call an ambulance.”

And there’s that word. The word that somehow always brings forth fear and panic into the eyes of people who, in Gordon’s opinion, should be _relieved_. It’s that same look that he’s seen before, in all those instances when he _should_ have called an ambulance, but definitely _didn’t_. It’s that same look Jane, Missy, and Derek had all given him, just before they had all said the same words that John says now. “No ambulance.” His hands grab at Gordon’s collar. “Dad… Dad can’t find out.”

  
  



	3. Chapter 3

He's gotten his breathing back under control, but now there are hands being shoved in his face and poking him in the throat and John's heart is hammering faster than it should be, but it feels like anger more than the vague, fluttery panic that it was before.

Because why is Gordon even _here_?

Actually. Excellent question. "Why is he even _here_?" This comes out a bit more contemptuous than he'd intended, but John rolls with it, glares at the blond, who's pulled him into a sitting position on the couch, and is poking and prodding and generally being a nuisance. "We're not calling anyone. No ambulance, no _Dad_. Jesus. Why the hell are you here, Gordon?"

Gordon arches an eyebrow and looks up at Virgil, so Virgil's the one who answers, and he still looks younger than he's supposed to. "I called him, I just wanted some backup. John, uh, maybe not an ambulance, but maybe we could swing by the ER—"

Well, that's not happening. That's not the problem either, the problem is that Gordon's here and it's Gordon's stupid idea to call an ambulance. "He's _nineteen_. What the hell good is he?"

"I'm _twenty_ ," Gordon corrects irritably, and John realizes he's probably missed a birthday. Valentine's Day, Gordon's birthday is supposed to be easy to remember. But then, you'd have to be the sort of person who remembers Valentine's Day.

He bats away the fingers trying to pull his eyelids open as Gordon peers intently at his pupils. Before he quite realizes it, John's hands are on Gordon's shoulders and he's shoved him off, landing with a yelp as his tailbone hits the floor. "I'm fine," he snaps. "Don't touch me."

Gordon gathers himself up off the floor to sit on the coffee table and he's got his hands in fists on his knees. The slow exhale of breath is Gordon keeping his temper. It pushes John that much closer to losing his and he feels his face twist, scowling, as Gordon keeps his voice steady and reasonable. "Dad won't be mad. Someone put something in your drink, John. It's fucked up, but it just happens at parties sometimes. It's not your fault, and we—"

"It'll pass. I'm _fine_."

"You're _not_."

"John—" Virgil's hand finds his shoulder next and John jerks away from the contact. He gets to his feet, unsteady for a moment, but backing away defensively and glaring at the both of them. His hands are shaking, but it's only because his hands are shaking worse than the rest of him that he actually notices. He balls them into fists of his own as Gordon gets to his feet, fingernails biting at his palms.

"Get out. Both of you, get out, I don't—I don't need _anything_ , I'm fine. Why the hell is Gordon here?" He rounds on Gordon, glares at him. "You're just trying to get me in trouble," he declares, blazing with fury at the audacity of his little brother. "I didn't _want_ you here, you weren't supposed to come. You ruin everything. Now _get out_."

Virgil looks like he wants to step forward, but Gordon throws an arm out and there are two pairs of brown eyes staring at him; Virgil's are widened with worry but Gordon's are narrowed and hard with suspicion. "We're getting out," Gordon answers, and he sounds older and sterner than Virgil does. "But we're not leaving. We're going down the hall to grab a defibrillator and then we're coming back. Try and calm down. We're gonna come back and figure this out."

" _Go_."

" _Going_ ," Gordon answers back, rolling his eyes. He gives Virgil a nudge towards the doorway. On his way out, there's the sound of John's keys being snatched off the table in the front hallway. When it shuts behind them, John stalks to the front hall and locks it anyway, cursing the lack of a chain on the door.

* * *

There's a locked door and a lot of questions standing between John and Gordon at the moment, because the thing about locked doors is that there's usually something on the other side. Gordon wants to know what it is. “I'm going to need you to tell me _exactly_ what happened at that party.”

There's a locked door and a lot of assumption standing between John and Gordon at the moment, because Virgil's not doing much to help. “Should we really be leaving him alone like this?”

There's a locked door and a lot of worry standing between John and Gordon at the moment, because when it really comes down to it, Gordon's got no idea what's going on. “The _party_ , Virge.”

Even now, Virgil's looking at the door like they've locked an injured lion in a cage. “I dunno,” he says. “They were just… I mean, they weren't exactly threatening. You know who John hangs out with.”

Gordon doesn't know, but he's got a decent guess. There's only one type of person who can tolerate John, and that's other Johns.

Plus Virgil, but Virgil can tolerate anyone. He doesn't count. “I didn't even think I had to worry about him—he doesn't drink, y'know? Not much, anyways. If one of us was in more danger of stumbling home, it was _me_ , but—”

“You said he was over-drinking?” Gordon asks, trying to piece this puzzle together. Trying to figure out how in the hell he's going to get his big brother's heartbeat down _without_ , apparently, calling an ambulance. “Before. You said he was over-drinking.”

“Well, maybe not by your standards,” Virgil says. “But it was a lot for him. You know how he is about that kind of thing.”

Again, Gordon _doesn't_ know, so he's forced to guess, although John's such a tight ass that it's not exactly hard to figure out one or two drinks is his max. Over-drinking. Alright. That's one symptom, and when it's paired with the shaking and the racing heart, it's pretty clear what's going on. Gordon had gotten this question right on the midterm, after all.

There's a locked door and a lot of confusion standing between John and Gordon at the moment, because Gordon can't figure out why anyone would put _uppers_ into someone's drink when _downers_ are so much more effective. “I hope you went to the gym this week, big guy,” he says. “I'm going to need your help.”

Because John _without_ drugs is already pretty hard to take on. He's thin and lean, but he's got the advantage of height and Gordon's been on the wrong end of John's hits enough times to know he's not exactly _harmless_. John with that added kick—that additional agitation and alertness, as his textbook had put it—is going to be a _nightmare_.

But it's not like it's John's fault. These Harvard guys are class A jerks, and it's not real hard to imagine one of them targeting the Tracy kid just for shits and giggles. Gordon's been on the wrong end of _that_ plenty of times too. _They're_ the ones who need their asses kicked. All John needs is a doctor.

There's a locked door and—see, but that's the thing. There's a _locked_ door, and that piece doesn't quite fit into this puzzle either, because people don't lock doors unless they've got something to hide.

Or unless they're scared.

Shit. There it is. That much falls into place, because John's on the other side of that door, his heart beating too fast and his body taking over. Of course he's scared. Gordon should have seen it sooner.

Right?

The whole thing makes his head hurt. Gordon pulls his thumb and finger to the bridge of his nose, trying to squeeze the headache away—the headaches that only come with nights spent in smoky rooms and brothers who need defibrillators. “I'm going to talk to him,” he says. “Just let me do the talking, okay?”

Virgil glances at Gordon in a way that seems to ask if he had even been there when John had shoved him on his ass, but there's no further protest. “Okay. Just—take it easy,” he says. “You know how he's been lately—”

“The last time I talked to John was at Christmas. I said ‘pass the potatoes' and he pretended he didn't hear me and kept talking to Alan. So no, I don't really know how he's been,” Gordon snaps, and that much manages to shut Virgil up. “Let's just get in there, tell him what's going on—because he's probably scared out of his mind—and then I'm going to do something about this _damn_ headache.”

There's a locked door and a lot of lies standing between John and Gordon at the moment, but while John knows the lies by heart, Gordon only knows about the door. 


	4. Chapter 4

John's pacing the finish off the hardwood in his living room. His body runs hot but his brain runs hotter, and he's just trying to think enough thoughts to keep up with the whirring machinery in his skull.

He'd only done it because dinner had been so taxing. Virgil had rolled into town and picked him up at the end of his last class before the start of spring break, and John had already been tapped out for the day. For the _week_ , in all honesty. It had been time to get home and crash, time for a hard reset, but no, they'd gone on to some stupid Italian restaurant and he'd had to sit through a conversation about stupid _Gordon_.

He'd only done it because it had been hard to hear about Gordon. John's still not sure entirely why, usually his attitude towards the second youngest is nothing more than mild disconnection. By the end of the meal he'd been blackly, ridiculously angry at the mere thought of his younger brother, and he'd put it down to the raggedy, bleeding edge of withdrawal. He'd been irritable and snappish at everything. Despite what everyone seems to think, he never actually _wants_ to be mad at Gordon.

When Virgil had heard a party happening overhead, John mentioned a headache and hoped his brother would take the hint. He hadn't. So John excused himself to take some aspirin that weren't actually aspirin, because there was no way in the world he was going to be able to manage otherwise.

He'd only done it because social situations are hard. Social situations at _Harvard_ are _really_ hard, because everyone seems to know who he is and who his father is and there's some running social tally of name drops and favour and John only feels like he's capable of navigating the whole scene when his brain's been chemically sharpened, gained the edges that can cut through all the societal red tape. He's gained the reputation for being straightforward. Really, he's just lost a lot of tact.

It had only been because coming down is hard and getting harder, and that kind of literally keeps him awake at night.

John's always hated to do things that are hard, which is why there's a bottle of Adderall posing as aspirin in his medicine cabinet in the first place. Harvard Business School is so hard it's killing him. The Adderall's just sort of helping, but he at least hopes to beat it to graduation and deal with it then.

It's killing him because his brain isn't wired for it. He'd spent all of high school teaching himself college-level physics, only to graduate and be given the choice of Harvard or Yale, with a subtle nod in the direction of Harvard. Someone, after all, needed to attend Dad's alma mater. John had only picked Harvard because it's a stone's throw from MIT. If he wakes up early and pretends he's only going for a run, he can usually manage to catch some stupidly early morning lecture at the campus where he's not enrolled and still make it to the first class on the campus where he is.

Because _someone_ needed to attend Dad's alma mater. If John's only learned one thing at Harvard, it's that he's probably only here because Jeff Tracy owed someone a favour.

He's here because Scott's out of the picture, Scott had gotten his father's Air Force pedigree, and is off flying jets in Yemen or someplace. John hasn't kept track. Virgil's an engineer to his fingertips and apparently that had been more obvious than the fact that in his heart all John wants is to stare into the infinite blackness of the universe. Maybe all the little Meccano sets had added up more easily than the telescope, because he's landed himself in an Engineering Program out in Colorado somewhere. Alan, apparently, is too young for consideration of his future. Probably Dad will turn him into an astronaut and round out the set of carbon copies of his own accomplishments.

Gordon—well. Gordon had gotten gold in his eyes and ever since he'd set his sights on that damn medal, there'd been nothing Jeff Tracy wasn't going to do to make sure his son got his shot. There'd been that debacle after the Olympics. It had been Gordon's own dumb fault it hit the tabloids, but when people started harassing the rest of the family—when there'd been reporters picking on _Alan_. That'd been the end of the line. Gordon had gotten called up on the carpet in their father's office, told to straighten up and fly right.

It's always seemed a little unfair that after falling so far from their father's graces, Gordon's reward had been the college and degree of his choosing, so long as he kept out of trouble.

John's usually so good at keeping out of trouble. But his choice hadn't even been his.

A stolen key turns in the lock of his apartment door, and John freezes in place, staring at the slow turn of the deadbolt. His heart's still pounding and his thoughts are still racing. And he can't shake the feeling that he's in such an awful lot of trouble.

* * *

There's the scratch of the key against the banged up lock—the turn of the tumblers in a door that's just as old as the rest of campus. There's the faint creak of the hinges and the sound of Virgil's shoes as they shuffle along cedar floors. There's the whistle of the wind, and the nonsensical rumblings from next door, and that distinct moan that comes with the upper floors of any aged building.

There's the absolute silence in which John looks at Gordon and Gordon looks at John, both of them amazed by just how _loud_ the apartment seems.

It's not a real silence. The closest Gordon's ever come to an honest silence is the Olympic pool during the biggest race of his life. Real silence doesn't have these minuscule pin drops—these minute movements. Silence is an absence, a hole, a _nothing_ , and maybe it's the headache, the adrenaline, or a winning combination of the two, but Gordon can hear _everything_.

There's the drip of a faucet that leaks at a steady pulse. There's the hum of the lights that need replacing. There's the long, torturous gulp of his older brother, and it's in the silence—or rather, the almost silence—that Gordon is finally able to see what he's looking at.

Gordon has been _caught_ plenty of times. It's only now, head pounding, that he realizes he might be doing the _catching_.

He stops that thought before it can get any further along in his mind. The adrenaline, he decides. Definitely the adrenaline. As John had so delicately put it earlier, he's being dramatic. John doesn't need flighty accusations. He needs to calm down, so Gordon stands tall, like he's seen Scott do a hundred times before, and looks his brother dead in the eye when he says, “You need to take a walk, John.”

This, perhaps, is the wrong thing to say. “I need to _what_?” John asks. It's as if he's just been threatened, but not very well.

“Walk it off,” Gordon says again. “Get your shorts on, tie up your shoes. We're going to take you to the track. They put uppers in your drink, Johnny, so I know you're feeling a little on edge right now, but—”

“ _Christ_ , Gordon, it's not even a big deal,” John snaps back. “What are you even _doing_ here? Wouldn't you rather be off at some party, drinking your life away, doing god knows what else? You'd make our father _very_ proud, I'm sure.”

John's voice is so much louder than anything else, driving stakes straight through Gordon's eyes. Gordon wants nothing more than to yell back, except he's all too aware of the fact that John's not the one who deserves it. The idiots in the party upstairs—the idiots whose music is too loud and whose dancing is barging through the ceiling—those are the idiots who need a solid hit in the gut, but not John. John's just scared.

And he looks it.

“That's the drugs talking,” Gordon says. “You'll feel better if you just—”

“No, this is _me_ talking.” A shadow cuts across John's face, as dark and bold as Gordon wishes himself to be. There's no longer a locked door between the two, but there's still plenty else separating them. “You're a _kid_ and you're _irresponsible_ and you don't get to make choices for me.”

“Well, you can either let me make the choices, or you can let an EMT do it,” Gordon growls.

“When do _I_ get to make the choices?”

“When you've got a steady _heartbeat_ , John— _that's_ when!”

“Hey, hey, _hey_.” Only with Virgil's warning do the other two realize that they've closed the gap between them. Virgil squeezes in, peeling them apart, then he turns to John. “The kid's right, John. You've gotta shake some of this off. You're not acting like yourself.”

There's the huff of John's furious breaths and the stretch of skin across Gordon's knuckles. There's the sound of time passing as John decides that Virgil is the one who's worth listening to, even if he's only repeating everything Gordon's just said.

And then there's a reluctant utterance from John. “Fine,” he says. “ _Fine_ , but I don't want—I'm not going to deal with—”

John looks at Gordon, as if Gordon has suddenly gone blind and can't see a foot in front of him. Honestly, his head hurts too much to care. Gordon's not exactly _dying_ to go out again anyways when Virgil says, “Just you and me. Couple laps, that's it.”

Gordon doesn't say anything more. John says quite a bit more, but none of it is worth listening to. Mostly it's just a lot of grumbling and _screw you_ ing and a fair amount of _get out of my face_ ing.

In the end, John leaves with Virgil and Gordon's left alone. The apartment seems so much quieter without John here, but Gordon's pulse is still stuck in his head, pounding at the back of his eyes, so he wanders into the bathroom and hopes John at least keeps some goddamn aspirin in this bare-bones apartment of his.

There's a rumble through the medicine cabinet and the sound of rummaging for the right thing. There's the rattle of pills shaking inside of a bottle—the same name-brand stuff they keep at home. There's a sigh of relief from the brother with a headache and then the click, click, click of a childproofed cap.

And then there's a silence. A true, honest silence that is composed only of absence and realization. Gordon pours the pills into his palm, examines them with an educated eye, and then he shoves them back into the bottle, because they're not the pills he needs. They're not pills he would ever have imagined John needing.

And they're not aspirin.

  
  
  



	5. Chapter 5

It had only been a little bump, just enough to get him through the rest of the night. It had hit a little harder than it was supposed to, probably he shouldn't have been drinking, and he's clearly spooked Virgil. But John just needs the night to be over, needs it to be the next morning, so he can reset his body clock and get back on track.

His routine's been thrown off. Usually John manages this just fine. Usually the weekend hits and he recovers enough to make it to the next little stepping stone, and then it's just a careful, precise progression of dosages through the week. But he's been thrown off. Increasingly it seems like he's going to crash—and crash _hard_.

It hadn't been necessary to get Gordon involved.

Gordon's not supposed to _be_ here. It had been Virgil John needed to see, Virgil he'd wanted to spend spring break with. Virgil's always had a way of asking the right questions and figuring out just what to say to get him to open up. John's not sure he's ever known how to do it on his own. He just needed someone to _talk_ to. It doesn't happen often, hasn't happened nearly often enough in the last two years since he'd started at Harvard, or maybe things wouldn't have gotten this bad, wouldn't have gotten to the point where he _needs_ Virgil to sit across from him at dinner or beside him at a bar and ask if everything really _is_ okay.

They've walked a handful of laps of the track down the block from John's apartment, and it's long since gotten dark. They're walking back now and the worst of it has finally started to wear off. He's stopped shaking from the stimulants in his system and started shaking from the chill of the air pulling at the sweat on his skin, stealing all the heat out of him. This is maybe the last chance Virgil's going to get, because John doesn't know how to start the conversation.

And Virgil lets him down. "Santa Barbara," the dark shadow beside him volunteers, in that sort of hesitant voice he's been using every time he's tried to make small talk and failed to hit the mark of what John really _needs_ to talk about. "Gordon's been at the University of California, the Santa Barbara campus. Typical, thinking you'd need shorts at this time of year. In _Boston_. It's barely above freezing. His brains are a little sunbaked, maybe."

"I don't fucking want to talk about _Gordon_."

Virgil winces. "No...yeah, no. Guess not. Sorry. That was bad timing. Right, okay." The younger of the pair sighs. "Sorry, J."

John grunts and shivers and just wants the night to be over. He can figure it all out if he can just get through to tomorrow. That's been true for the past two years.

They hit the stairs up to the front door of his apartment and he stumbles, would've cracked his face open if Virgil hadn't been there. This, additionally, comes back to being Gordon's fault. If Gordon hadn't turned up, John wouldn't have had to leave. He would have paced the floor for another hour, rearranged his bookshelf, and then crawled into bed and slept for half a day.

Instead he's out of breath and shivering, and his younger brother is halfway dragging him back to his apartment, and it's just all so goddamn unnecessary that John's still trying to find the energy to feed the anger. Stupid _Gordon_.

"He can't stay. Nowhere he can sleep, was just gonna be you, crash on the couch." He manages to make this clear as they stand in the building lobby, waiting for the elevator to ding. Virgil seems to have realized that the stairs are a non-option.

"We'll figure it out, John."

"I was fine," John mutters, but by the time he does they're already in the elevator and Virgil's got a hand on the wall and an arm wrapped around John's shoulders. "It'll pass. It always passes."

"Yeah, it'll pass. Looks like it's hit you with the damn door on the way out. _You're_ the one about to pass out, J. C'mon. Not much further now."

"This is so fucking stupid," he continues, but by then they're outside the door of his fourth floor apartment and Virgil's got him leaning against the wall beside the door while he fumbles with John's keys. "Fucking...fucking _Gordon_."

The door opens, and there's Gordon. And the look on his face gives Virgil pause, but John's almost too far gone to care, until he spots the little white bottle, clenched in his brother's hand. And the phone, clenched in the other.

“…W-Wait,” John says.

* * *

Gordon can’t decide what feels heavier: the pills in one hand, the phone in the other, or the world that sits atop his shoulders. His headache seems like the least of his problems as he sits on the edge of John’s couch in John’s apartment, holding a prescription that isn’t at all John’s. Adderall. _Unprescribed_ Adderall, because John’s not the kind of person who needs to use it. More than that, he’s obviously not using it _correctly_ , so Gordon can’t decide what feels heavier. The pills in one hand, the phone in the other, or the decision that has to be made.

John’s apartment is quiet when it’s empty and, by the look of things, it’s frequently empty. At home, John’s room is cluttered with star maps and telescopes and every goddamn textbook under the sun, all of them scattered and opened and bookmarked in some way or another. That’s not the case in his apartment. John’s apartment is crisp ninety-degree angles and clean countertops. John’s apartment is order and obsession and a bookshelf so organized that the Library of Congress could learn a thing or two from it.

John’s apartment is nothing like John’s bedroom, so Gordon sits at the edge of the couch and wonders if there’s anything _else_ John’s hiding in plain sight. Gordon wonders just how many of John’s aspirin bottles are holding Adderall.

He hears the voices first, then the lock. The light of the hallway floods into the room, but Gordon doesn’t look up. All he sees are shadows, one bulky, one narrow, and both entirely too tall. “W-Wait,” John says.

But Gordon doesn’t wait. “I already called Dad.” This is a lie. He thought about calling Dad, sure. He thought about calling Scott or calling Grandma, but in the end, he couldn’t make himself call any of them. In the end, he only wanted to call Virgil. “Couldn’t get through. I’m gonna try again in a few minutes.”

John’s been spitting hellfire and disdain all night long, but it’s strange how things change when one person’s fate is in another person’s hands. It’s strange how the highest highs have the lowest lows, and it’s strange for Gordon to watch the exhaustion play out on his older brother. “Stop,” he says. “Just stop—just… damn it, Gordon, just _listen_.”

“No, sure, yeah,” Gordon says. “That sounds totally reasonable. You’ve been listening to _me_ all night, so—”

“Shut up—shut _up_ ,” John barks, and Gordon’s not sure if John’s going to charge him or if he’s going to break down right there. “Let me explain.”

Gordon is in no mood to expand on the subject. He’s _got_ John. The secret to taking down perfect, intelligent, golden boy John Tracy is in the palm of his hands and Gordon can’t help but notice a distinct lack of satisfaction. “ _Adderall_ , John?” he says, finally looking up at him. “This shit will _tear you apart_ if you don’t know what you’re doing.”

“I _do_ know what I’m doing,” he says, and then it’s like the yell has stolen another level of energy from him, because he sways on his feet and just barely catches himself before he falls. Not that it keeps him from yelling some more. “I was fine until _you_ came into town and decided to—decided to—”

“Decided to _what_ , Johnny?” Gordon wants to know. “Let me have it—tell me _exactly_ what horrible things I’ve done since I got here. I’m all ears.”

There’s a brief pause in argument and everyone in the room seems to notice it, except the one person who needs to. “You were—” Another sway, but Gordon stays put in his seat at the edge of John’s couch.

There’s a blink, then another, just before John shakes his head clear and overtly changes the subject. “We can work something out.”

Gordon is not an intimidating person. Not in the slightest. But when he looks back down at the pills in one hand and the phone in the other, his expression turns to a smile, and there’s something undeniably _scary_ about him. “You’re seriously trying to bargain with me right now?” he says through a laugh. “What could you possibly offer in this position, d'you think you’re gonna do my homework for me?”

"Clearly it could use it if you’re only making a 3.4 GPA.”

Unbelievable. Un-be- _fucking_ -lievable. Leave it to John. Leave it to John to try and manipulate a conversation back into his own hands. Leave it to John to run his mouth about something he doesn’t know. John lives on the other side of the fucking _country_ , so of course he doesn’t know about the carefully calculated missed questions or the obsessively studied syllabi. Of course he doesn’t know that Gordon does more math in a _week_ than John does in an _entire semester_ , just because Dad’s watching his every move and Gordon’s got expectations to fulfill that _do not_ include the honor roll.

John’s got _no fucking idea_ what it feels like to have Dad breathing down his neck all the time, so maybe it’s time he found out. “I’m calling Dad,” Gordon says, and this time it’s not a lie.

He stands to leave the room, because as much as he wants to see John’s face when everything gets taken from him, Virgil’s standing back by the door, giving Gordon a look not even puppies could beat. So Gordon doesn’t look at Virgil. He just stuffs the pills in his pocket and holds the phone up to his ear.

John follows close behind and Gordon does his best to ignore him. “Gordon—Gordon, I’m sorry, just—Gordon, _stop_. Gordon. Gordon, let me—”

John’s cut off by his own hollow, broken bang against the floor. This is the thing that finally makes Gordon stop. This is the sound that finally makes Gordon turn, and when he sees his brother—tall, proud John—reduced to his knees, Gordon is struck where he stands. Never once had he seen John Tracy beg. “Don’t tell Dad,” he pleads, drained of hope and strength and everything that makes him human. “Don’t tell Dad. Please don’t tell Dad.

Gordon doesn’t feel like he’s looking at reality when he says, “Get up.”

And maybe John doesn’t hear him, but more likely John isn’t listening. “Don’t tell Dad,” he says, over and over, as if for all the knowledge he has, this is the only thing he knows. “Don’t tell Dad. Gordon, don’t tell Dad.”

“Get up.”

Big brother looks up at younger and Gordon’s hit by those same green eyes that had glared at him years ago—those eyes that had torn him apart, limb by limb, without any mercy whatsoever. “ _Please_.”

“Get the hell _up_ , Johnny,” he snarls. There’s a blink, then a breath, and just like that John’s not on his knees anymore. His head bangs against drywall and Gordon catches a whiff of John’s breath as the air leaves his chest. John won’t cry, that’s for damn sure, but in that moment, John’s shirt in Gordon’s hands, there’s no doubt that he wants to.

This time it’s brown eyes glaring at green and it’s Gordon’s turn to give his brother a piece of his mind. “You don’t _get_ to beg, do you understand?” he asks, and maybe Gordon’s the jokester of the family, but there’s nothing funny about him right now. “ _You_ did this. _You_ fucked up, John. And now you expect me to treat you with respect, when _you_ can’t even treat you with respect—it doesn’t work like that. You’re going to deal with the consequences and then you’re going to a _damn_ hospital.”

“Dad will—”

“Tear you apart,” Gordon says. “Yeah. Just like he tore me apart, but it’s better than you tearing yourself apart—”

“ _Hate_ me.”

There’s a certain sort of expectation that comes with the name Gordon Tracy and it is not, in any way, the same sort of expectations that come with the name John Tracy. So maybe John’s not as wrong as Gordon wants him to be. Dad expects this sort of thing from Gordon—maybe he’s even _waiting_ for it—but John? God. John might just be crushed under the weight of that disappointment. “He’ll hate me.”

Gordon holds tight to his brother’s collar once more, because Gordon’s happy to feed John to the dogs, but it’s a whole different thing entirely to feed him to Dad. “We’re going to do this my way,” he says. “And you’re going to listen to me—you don’t, and I’ll dial 911 before you can say _rehab_ , you got it?”


	6. Chapter 6

Well. This is just about the worst spring break ever.

Nothing in the world is black and white, except the way Gordon and John look at each other. Virgil's always been the gray shading between them, the no man's land. And the pair of them are so similar that sometimes he wants to bang their thick skulls together. That had kind of been what he'd _hoped_ spring break would consist of.

Virgil had entertained a distant hope that he might patch things up between Gordon and John, might get them both to understand that what had happened after the Olympics happened _two years ago_. It's long since time they both got over it. He'd hoped that the disdain from John and the resentment from Gordon might break down if the pair of them finally sat down and _talked_ to each other. Two years on either side, John the older and Gordon the younger, and Virgil, eternally caught in the middle.

He's literally had to get in the middle of them now, because Gordon's gone flying off the handle and his hands are perilously close to their older brother's throat, two fists full of his shirtfront, and John all ashen and numb and with more to the story than whatever Gordon thinks there is. So Virgil's got one hand on John's chest and the other on the back of Gordon's collar, and the hallway where the three of them are caught is a taut, awful place full of anger and anxiety and exhaustion, and this all needs to stop.

" _Time out_ ," Virgil rumbles, and gives Gordon a rough shake, gets him to let go of John. The redhead sags against the wall and then slides down to drop to the floor and bury his face in his hands. "Okay. Gordon, _Jesus_. What...okay, first off, is he okay? Is he gonna be okay?"

Gordon's sneer at their brother is pure, utter contempt. "Oh, he's just _fine_. Tweaked a little too hard, is all. Looks like a hell of a thing from the outside, but I bet anything he's done it before, the _idiot_. He's just crashing. He _deserves_ this."

"Do we need to call someone?"

"Only if he's an asshole about it."

" _Gordon_."

Gordon shrugs. "No. Nah, probably not. Need to pitch his damn drugs in the harbor, though. This isn't a one-time thing. This is an _addiction_."

There's an awful glee in the way he says it, and almost worse than seeing whatever's happened to John is seeing Gordon _glad_ that it's happened. Virgil winces and gives Gordon a shove, gets him to back off of John. But—one problem at a time. Virgil's current problem is figuring out if John's okay. He crouches down and hesitantly grips his brother's shoulder, goes ignored. He looks up at Gordon. "What do we do?"

"Take his drugs, ditch him, and go for drinks," Gordon answers, distressingly bright. He nudges John's shin with the toe of his shoe. "If he drags himself to bed, good for him. We'll check back in the morning."

"Gordon, for god's sake. We're not leaving him like this."

"Like a strung-out speed freak? S'what he is." There it is, black and white. Gordon's hand darts into his pocket and pulls out the little white bottle. He shakes it, and the space where the pills rattle is empty, hollow the way John looks. "Adderall, twenty-milligrams. Bet he's hitting them like two, three times a day. We should haul him down to some back alley and leave him _there_. Make sure he learns his lesson."

This is probably over the line, but Gordon's always been one to run his mouth. Virgil's jaw tightens, but Gordon's the one who knows this stuff and though he's tempted to tell his brother to back off, he needs the knowledge that goes along with Gordon's righteous scorn. "You need to stop enjoying this," he warns, and shakes John's shoulder, gets a shudder and a groan of protest in answer. "What's going to happen?"

"It's already happening. I've seen it, seen other swimmers do it, dumbass kids at school. Just keep buffering the high along, eventually you push it too far, and when you back off, you crash. He'll be exhausted and he'll feel like shit and he'll hate himself, and he'll _deserve_ to. If he doesn't get another hit, he's gonna start go into withdrawal. He's not gonna be able to _handle_ withdrawal, it'll kick his ass. It'll be awful and he won't be able to get through it himself, he'll give up. And he'll just drop right back into it. If we don't call Dad, then we oughta call _Scott_."

John hears this and manages a shake of his head. Virgil grits his teeth, and sighs, "Gordon—"

The light in Gordon's eyes is pure malice now. "Or _Alan_."

" _No,_ " from John now, weakly and with tears glinting in his eyes as he looks up. "Please, _please_. Don't. J-just don't, I didn't mean it. I'm _sorry_ , Gordon, fuck, I-I didn't...I never meant it to _be_ like this. It wasn't supposed to be hard. It—I—I wasn't...wasn't supposed to...to _need it_ , I just, I—"

"Well, what did you _think_ was gonna happen?" Gordon spits, folding his arms and glaring down at his brother. "Fucking idiot. John, you always think you're so much _better_ than everybody. Well, this is proof you're _not_. Something finally knocked you the hell out of your stupid ivory tower and it's about damn time. Down here with the rest of us mortals. How d' _you_ like it?"

This gets Virgil to turn on the younger of his brothers, because by now this is just cruelty. Gordon's towering over John, but he doesn't tower over Virgil, who outweighs him by nearly a hundred pounds. His upper lip loses its curl when Virgil jabs a finger in his collarbone. " _Stop_ ," Virgil growls. "You're just...fuck, Gordon, you've made your damn point. He screwed up. I get it. But he's obviously _not okay_ , and you're just...god, for fuck's sake, you're just _tormenting_ him. What the _hell_. If you're not gonna help me get him to bed, then get the hell out of the way. Park your ass in the living room, we've gotta talk about this."

There's a moment in which Gordon's plainly desperate to say something snide, but instead he turns on his heel and leaves Virgil in the hallway, alone with their older brother.

For a little longer than he intends there's another of those loud silences, occupied by soft sniffling and shuddering breath.

John breaks this silence. "I don't wanna do this anymore," he mumbles, and the heels of his hands press against his eyes as he lets out a shuddering sigh. "Make him go. Why'd you even bring him, I just wanted to talk to _you_. If—if we just could've _talked_ about it...b-but then...he...oh god, don't let him tell anyone, please, _please_. Virgil, _please_ , I—"

Virgil cuts him off, steadies his hands on John's shoulders. "I won't. C'mon, John. It'll be okay, we'll work it out. Talk to me now, though. Okay? Has this happened before? You just, you overdid it a bit? Is that all?" A quick, tight nod is his answer, and Virgil shakes his head, as anxious as he is disappointed. "God, Johnny. Okay. What...what helps? What do you need me to do?"

"I just—I need to sleep, c-can I just sleep? Please, Virg?"

"Yeah, J. That'd probably be best. C'mon."

"You have to make Gordon _stop_."

"I've got you covered, Johnny. Let's go."

The way John sounds young, god, that's the worst of it. Reminds him of Gordon, back when he'd push himself right to the very limit, drilling in the pool. Virgil bends to help his brother to his feet, down the hall and through the bedroom door. He guides John to bed, lets him drop onto the neatly tucked in duvet. Trying to make up in gentleness what Gordon had dished out in cruelty, Virgil tugs his brother's shoes off, nudges and pesters him until he clambers beneath the blankets. There's some more half-awake pleading, but John's fading fast, and by the time Virgil's pulled the blankets up to John's narrow shoulders, he's all the way gone.

It's not sleep, Virgil decides, as he shuts off the light and leaves the door half-open behind him. It's something deeper and darker, and it's what the Adderall's been covering up. Whatever this is, why ever John's let himself get to this point—that's what he and Gordon are gonna need to figure out. This is something Virgil doesn’t have in common with John. But he knows he’s seen something like this in Gordon. And he’s going to have to talk Gordon into helping John instead of hurting him.

* * *

There are many things John understands about Gordon and plenty more things Gordon understands about John. Convincing either John or Gordon of this fact, however, seems to be where the real difficulty lies. It’s something everyone else can see, the second oldest and the second youngest, mirroring each other so frequently that to count the similarities would be to count the stars in the sky or the fish in the sea. It’s something that is laughed about at the kitchen table—snidely remarked upon in the shadows of Tracy Island. _Everyone_ knows about John and Gordon except, of course, John and Gordon, because when a person looks in a mirror they see only what is wrong, not what has been there since the very beginning.

That’s why Virgil is the one who has been checking up on John. That’s why Virgil is the one fluffing pillows and filling water glasses, because where Virgil sees his brothers and their shared ability to push themselves too far, Gordon only sees someone who pushed himself for the _wrong reasons_.

“He’s not dead,” Virgil says, landing on the sofa. “In case you were wondering.”

Gordon hasn’t been wondering, in fact, but not out of spite. He has simply been too busy standing in front of John’s bookcase, examining the titles. There’s some Bradbury, a couple of authors Gordon pretends not to have heard of, and enough _Star Wars_ books to make John an official nerd, but the rest are all textbooks. Some of them make sense— _Accounting: Balancing Businesses_ , for example—but there are plenty that don’t, and Gordon knows John’s always been one to own too many books about space, but these ones have scrap paper and sticky notes between the pages. These ones have been _used_. “How long has John been in school again?” he asks.

“Forever,” Virgil mumbles.

“I’m serious.”

When Virgil doesn’t answer, Gordon turns to see why. Virgil’s eyes are closed, his head back as he hugs a throw pillow across his chest. “Virgil?”

There’s a jolt from the older brother, snapping himself back into consciousness before he lets his head fall back again, eyes closed once more. “Wake me up when it’s time to check on him again.”

Gordon rolls his eyes in a very John-like way, tossing a blanket from the arm of the couch onto Virgil’s lap. “You can’t even keep your eyes open,” he says. “Look, you sleep and I’ll watch John. Make sure he doesn’t stop breathing or whatever.”

Virgil peels one eye open, casting a look at Gordon that suggests it may be the worst idea he’s ever heard.

Gordon scoffs. “What do you think I’m gonna do, Virge? Stuff a pillow over his face?”

“The fact you’ve provided me with a specific example isn’t helping—”

“Relax, okay?” Gordon says. “I won’t kick his ass until he can fight back.”

There’s a moment between the two of them, thick and muddled and not as clear as things seem to be with John. “Again,” Virgil says. “You won’t kick his ass _again_ until he can fight back.”

Gordon doesn’t respond to this. Gordon isn’t sure how, so he turns back to John’s neatly organized collection of textbooks. It’s nothing like Gordon’s bookcase. On the opposite side of the same country, Gordon’s shelves are messy and out of order and hold the wonders of 300 miles _below_ the Earth’s surface, not 300 miles _above_. On the opposite side of the same country, Gordon’s shelves are stacked with the knowledge that wants and needs to know; meanwhile, John’s shelves seem to be stacked with the knowledge he wants and then, separately, the knowledge he needs.

The divide between work and passion—another thing that Gordon doesn’t understand about his brother.

He’s just about to pull one of the more beaten-up books from the shelf, _A Brief History of Time_ , but there’s a good amount of noise coming from the other side of John’s door and Gordon’s promised that he won’t let John die. Not yet, anyways, so he decides it’s probably best to peek inside, just in case.

There are many things John understands about Gordon and plenty more things Gordon understands about John, but neither of them believe this to be true. When asked, they will both say they’re too different to mirror one another, but the thing both of these boys forget is that with reflections come opposites. With lefts come rights, and as Gordon opens the door to John’s room, he’s struck with one of those similarities he rarely ever sees.

Because Gordon knows this part of his brother—understands wholly and completely what it feels like to toss and turn in his sleep. He understands what it feels like to slip into that unconscious world, only to convince yourself it’s real, and he understands the nightmares are what rob a person of their sanity.

But more than anything else, he understands what it feels like to be trapped in his own sleep, calling out the name John calls out now, not hoping for help, but rather praying for a forgiveness he doesn’t need yet.

“ _Dad_.”

It’s a firm hit in the gut, so Gordon’s got to catch his breath. John’s sweating again, which means Gordon is too as he closes the door behind him and takes a seat in the chair at the corner of the room. “You sorry son of a bitch,” he says, even though he’s fully aware that he’s going unheard. No different than usual. “This is gonna be a long night for both of us, Johnny, but it’s going to be a hell of a lot longer for you.”


	7. Chapter 7

His dreams used to be experiences in the abstract, muddles of concepts and sensations and vague recollections of his past. He never really used to remember them, other than those fleeting few moments right upon waking.

These days he's gone too far the other way.

When John sits up, everything's gone back to normal, and that should be the first clue. Instead, it's such an enormous relief that he lets himself drop back to the mattress for a few minutes, breathing in dawn and birdsong and the breeze through the window. This is fine. This is routine, this is better. This is all he needed, just for his day to go back to normal. He can't even remember why it feels like such a relief.

He feels light and untethered by anything as he sits up in bed, kicks off the blankets and shrugs into a t-shirt and tugs on a pair of jeans. He's barefoot as he ducks into the bathroom across the hallway, and the tiles are cool on the soles of his feet. He doesn't glance at his reflection before he opens the cabinet—but he lingers a moment staring at the shelves before closing it again. They shouldn't be empty. He'd come in here for a reason, but it's slipped his mind. Doesn't matter. Better get on with it.

The sensation of something missing follows him down the hallway and into his living room, and he turns towards the kitchen thinking of toast and coffee and maybe half a grapefruit—and freezes at the sight of his father, standing at the counter, with a small white bottle in his hand and a face like ice.

"Dad."

He hears himself say it, but it's all he seems able to say. Because then his father starts speaking.

"After every opportunity you've been afforded, this is how you repay me?"

He can't breathe. John doesn't understand how this is even possible, he's been so _careful_. He knows the mistakes that get made by people in his position and he's been meticulous about not making them. His arrangement is so discrete as to verge on paranoid. His father shouldn't even _be_ here.

There's a hollow rattle that feels like it's coming from his chest, feels like his heart hammering in his rib cage again. His father's voice is cold, black iron. " _You_ did this. You _deserve this_. And you're going to deal with the consequences."

If he could just get the words out, if he could just explain how he hadn't meant for this to happen, none of it. How he'd gotten through that first year, how he'd been floundering against the strain of how _pointless_ it all was. How petty his friendships were, how trivial the coursework seemed. And how it was _hard_ , for the first time in his life, to be asked to do something that didn't come naturally to him. John has never been able to tell why his father thought this world would suit him, has never been able to figure out if it was some sort of test.

"You're a disgrace and an embarrassment. An _addict_. This is an addiction."

John shakes his head vehemently, still absent of words and with his chest starting to feel tight, tense, squeezed by the pressure of an invisible hand. He forces himself to swallow, forces himself to take a breath, forces the words out and manages, "N-n. _No_ , I—"

And he jerks awake again. He's breathing now, great, heaving gulps of air, and the room isn't dawn-bright like it was before. It's dark and the sheets have tangled around his legs, and his skin is damp with sweat again. John struggles to disengage from the blankets, to sit up and slow his heart rate down, but as he does, the door pushes open again, and his dad is looming at the end of the bed this time.

The space between them closes in a freakish burst of non-movement, and his father's hands have seized the front of his shirt, twisted and clenched in the fabric, shaking him. "Well, what did you _think_ was gonna happen?"

And abruptly he's _actually_ awake, really awake, and it's Gordon who's got his hands on John's shoulders, shaking him a little more roughly than he probably needs. "St—stop. _Stop_."

"You back?" Gordon demands, still right in John's face. It's Gordon's hands and Gordon's voice John's been hearing, but the dream is already fleeting, mercifully fading away from him, and reality's the more pressing concern.

"Lemme go. Let _go_. Get off, let _go_."

Gordon does and John sags back into the pillows, defeated and exhausted again, and aching inside at the fear of his father. It's dark but for the light from the hallway, and John throws his arm across his eyes, sighs again.

"Done?" Gordon’s arms are folded over his chest, defensive. "You've got water by the bed," he adds, though grudgingly, as though John doesn't deserve it. Probably he doesn't.

John just shakes his head. He doesn't care about anything else at the moment other than dropping off back to sleep.

* * *

Gordon’s largest concern at the moment is that John will stop breathing.

He’s not sure that it’s likely—not even sure that it’s possible. He hasn’t gotten that far in his textbook yet, and won’t for about two more weeks, but matters involving the heart have always had a way of leaving people breathless, so Gordon’s having a hard time ruling out the possibility.

That’s why he’s here, babysitting his big brother, because what John did was stupid— _damn_ stupid—but he doesn’t deserve to die for it. Nightmares, sure, he deserves those, and on top of that, Gordon wants nothing more than to sit John down on the opposite side of Dad’s desk and let him have it.

Or he could tell Alan. That’s what Gordon really wants to do, because ever since the idea popped into his head, he hasn’t stopped thinking about how satisfying it would be to watch Alan look at John the way he had once looked at Gordon. That’s what John _really_ deserves, so Gordon’s having a hard time ruling out that possibility, too.

So here he sits, John’s breaths steady, running over all the possibilities that haven’t yet been ruled out. It’s been a long night, just like Gordon promised, and now day hangs heavy in the air, plugging the _spring_ back into spring break. John’s chest moves up and down, up and down—he’s crashed and he’s crashed _hard_ , so Gordon’s not all that surprised when the sound of John’s phone doesn’t wake him up.

Gordon’s breath catches at the sound, and he realizes that maybe he had been drifting off. Maybe it’s time to wake Virgil up and switch shifts. Maybe he’ll just sit here for a moment longer and let the call go to voice-mail.

He bolts back awake again when the phone starts ringing for a second time. He almost hopes it’ll wake John up enough to turn it off, but John’s in a dead sleep, so once again Gordon’s got to take care of everything.

It’s not _freezing_ by any means, but compared to Gordon’s mornings on the west coast, it certainly _feels_ that way as he uncurls and stretches. Gordon’s breaths seem heavy—tense and slow and tired as he makes his way across the room. Whoever’s calling is on their third attempt now, so it better be someone important.

Gordon’s breaths stop altogether when he sees it’s Alan.

Well. Now or never, right?

“Hey, Al.” Gordon’s struck by the sound of his own voice, low and groggy, leaving him to wonder just how many of John’s breaths he had missed while he was drifting off. His eyes lock on John again, determined not to miss any more.

There’s a pause on the line, then a very confused, “Gordon?” as if calling John’s phone and having Gordon pick up was some sort of cosmic blunder. And hey, maybe it is. “What are you—?”

“Virgil invited me to tag along for spring break,” Gordon explains. “We’re... spending the week with John.”

Which isn’t a lie, but definitely isn’t the whole truth either. Not that Alan picks up on that fact. “Oh,” he says, and it’s that same tone Virgil used when Gordon agreed to fly out for the weekend. Great news. Happy days. Two bothers finally putting their differences aside. “That’s awesome. So does that mean, uh… is John there?”

“John’s busy,” Gordon says.

When he next speaks, Alan sounds like someone for whom John has never been too busy. “...wait, really?”

John’s breaths keep going, steady. Even. Not at all aware of what’s happening outside of his own head—which, granted, isn’t much of a change from usual. “Yeah, he’s out right now,” Gordon says, guiltless.

“And he left his phone?”

Alan’s always been too damn quick for his own good. “What do you want me to tell him, Al?”

“Oh! Uh… I was just wondering if he wanted to come home this week. Y’know. Since our spring breaks match up and everything.”

This is Gordon’s chance, he knows, to tell Alan everything. No, John can’t come home, because he decided he would rather tear his body up instead. No, John can’t come home, because he’s spending spring break in a bed since he wanted a little extra boost here and there. John can’t come home, because he _screwed up_. The words are all there, at the end of Gordon’s breath, so he doesn’t hesitate. “Listen Alan, John’s—”

“It’s just that I’ve got this physics project due at the end of break,” Alan cuts in. “Extra credit, but still. With John’s help I could knock this thing out of the park, y’know?”

The words come without a single breath in between and Gordon just _knows_ Alan’s been waiting to say them. Gordon knows that having John come home—cool, knowledgeable John—would just about make Alan’s week.

The word _hero_ crosses Gordon’s mind, robbing him of every last breath he has, and Gordon knows he can’t tell Alan what’s happening on this end. He can’t do that to his brother.

Alan. He can’t do that to Alan.

“I’ll let him know you called,” he says finally.

“Alright, thanks!” Alan says, voice bright. “Oh man, my professor is going to give me, like, ten-hundred percent when he finds out I’m getting my information straight from MIT.”

“Harvard,” Gordon corrects. “John goes to Harvard—easy mix up. They’re right next door to each other.”

“Yeah,” Alan says. “I know. That’s how John keeps going to all those lectures at MIT—their physics department is _crazy_ good. With John’s help, there’s no _way_ I’ll score lower than an A.”

That’s when Gordon looks at John, sleeping his life away, and thinks back to the bookcase. Back to the neat and proper business textbooks and too many beaten up pages of physics. Back to the divide between passion and work that may not have been much of a divide at all. Back to the brother who had wanted to _keep going._

All at once, it feels like it’s his own breathing that Gordon needs to worry about.

  
  



	8. Chapter 8

Oh.

_God_.

The clock by John's bed tells him it's three in the afternoon, and this means he's lost at least a day. If it's as bad as last time, it might be two. His phone's nowhere in reach and his mouth is dry and his head hurts, but the worst is the gnawing, awful hunger, like a lead bar dropped across his stomach, pinning him down and pinching him in half. Which admittedly makes sense, if the last time he ate was—was...

Dinner with Virgil. And then everything afterward.

Someone's opened his bedroom window, presumably to help wake him up, but the temptation to throw himself out of it is real and awful. He pushes the blankets back instead, blearily checks his phone and doesn't acknowledge the missed calls or the messages. He's still in a t-shirt and jeans and the former is too thin and clingy and the latter too stiff and tight against his skin. Everything's uncomfortable and life is wretched.

Life improves by the very smallest fraction when he swaps the jeans for fleece-lined track pants, and fumbles a sweater out of his dresser drawer, a slouchy gray cable-knit thing, a Christmas present from Grandma. It's a bit too broad across the shoulders and therefore long in the sleeves, because Virgil had been used for sizing, with a few inches added to make up for John's height. But it's warm and it's familiar and probably one of the only soft and comforting objects in the entire apartment.

Okay.

John ducks through the hallway to the bathroom, runs on auto-pilot until he's washed his hands and his face for good measure and opened the medicine cabinet door and been stared in the face by the empty place where the worst part of him is supposed to be.

There's a burst of white-hot anger through him, an urge to slam the cabinet door shut and shatter the mirror and grab fistfuls of glass and press them against his face and throat and chest, until he looks as torn and bloodied and defeated as he feels inside. He doesn't. John's fingers clench at the edge of the sink, squared off white porcelain not as sharp as it needs to be on the palms of his hands, and he just holds himself still until the feeling passes. It doesn't take long, he's too tired to sustain it, a bright, magnesium flare of fire, like a flashbulb.

Maybe if everything that's wrong were actually visible, he would be on the receiving end of something a little less dire than Gordon's raw, abusive scorn.

As though _Gordon_ has any right to look down at _him_.

John shoulders the bathroom door open, and leans against it for a long few moments after he closes it behind him. The rest of the apartment's quiet. Gordon, Virgil, and a little bottle of not-aspirin have taken off somewhere, but John's still cautious as he pads into the living room in his bare feet, blinks at the glare of the sun off the wooden floor. It's hunger that's driven him out of bed, but there's some awful fear dug into the back of his skull, and as he peers into the kitchen, the sense of relief he feels at finding it empty is inexplicable. Of course the kitchen's empty.

In more than one sense of the word. John's still being chewed in half from the inside out by the hungry, hollow place in his stomach, but he doesn't have the energy to do much more than scrape the remnants of a jar of peanut butter onto the end of a loaf of bread, fold it over, and devour it, and then curl up on the couch, entirely unsatiated.

There's an AED on the coffee table.

The defibrillator Gordon had mentioned, being _dramatic_ , however long ago Gordon had mentioned it, sits and stares John in the face, with its bright red case and its little electrified heart symbol. He reads the instructions on the side of it, still hungry and sore and exhausted and waiting for the phone he's got wedged in his pocket to ring. Waiting for his father to call. Or Scott. If it's Alan, he just won't pick up, he can't bear that. If it's Virgil, he'll at least try. If it's _Gordon_ , he'll throw the phone out the window.

John's half asleep when the key turns in the lock and his door opens, maybe half an hour later. There's the rustle of grocery bags and the sound of heavy soles hitting the floor as shoes are kicked off, the low mutter of conversation between his younger brothers.

"—I mean, all I'm saying is I don't know what you expected. It's Boston. Of course it's cold."

"Sure, but just—"

And talk ceases as the pair of them appear at the end of the hallway, Gordon peering around Virgil's shoulder. John doesn't especially want to be acknowledged, and Virgil's voice is appropriately hushed. "Oh. Is he...?"

"Dunno. One way to find out. Hey, sunshine, you awake?"

There's a rustle of grocery bags again and then a head of garlic arcs expertly across the apartment and bounces off John's forehead. This seems like it hurts more than it actually does and he presses a hand over his temple. "D'you _have to_? Do you really have to be _awful_? Gordon, _fuck off_."

"Hah. Ten points, hey Virge? I— _ow_! Ow ow _ow_!"

Virgil's taken a leaf out of their grandmother's book and has Gordon firmly by the ear, his hands full of grocery bags. "Kitchen," Virgil orders sternly, tweaking Gordon's ear a final time and giving him a shove through the door. "Make yourself useful and come out when you're done being an ass. Or when there's food, whichever comes first."

"Ow. _Christ_ , Virgil—"

" _Enough_ ," Virgil growls. "I _told_ you to lay off and I'll kick your ass if you don't quit it, Gord, don't think I won't."

There's more bad tempered muttering from Gordon, but he retreats to the kitchen and the sound of running water and the exhaust fan over the stove soon drowns out whatever he's getting up to with the rattle of pots and pans.

Virgil crosses the room and drops into the chair beside the couch, drums his fingers on the arms of it. "Hey, John," he says finally.

"Mm."

"Slept a long while."

"Yeah."

"Feel any better?"

This gets a baleful glare. "No, I feel like _shit_."

Virgil nods and sighs. "Yeah, kinda figure that's par for the course. We, uh. Well, I mean obviously you can't...uh...with the drugs, or whatever. Obviously we had to get those gone. You've gotta stop this, John."

It's acid on his tongue, bitter and painful, to try and tell Virgil that he's _tried_. That that's what the last time was, the last time he got to a point where he'd realized he was losing control. When in a fit of terror he'd thrown a few hundred dollars’ worth of someone else's prescription down the trash chute in the hallway, and had a weekend of exhausting, agonizing withdrawal. John had gotten so badly seized by anxiety and depression and fatigue—by the time Dad had called to find out why he'd missed two days worth of classes—there hadn't been any option but to fall back into it.

But it's too hard to say. John just shrugs and sighs instead.

* * *

 

There are certain rules—nay, _laws_ —which apply to sibling warfare, as undeniable as they are unavoidable. It is a fact universally known that the youngest sibling can cause maximum mischief with minimal repercussions; meanwhile, the oldest gets first shot at the keys to the car, the curfew past ten, and everything else deemed holy in the world of childhood. It is a fact undeniably true that the concept of hand-me-downs becomes significantly more beneficial as one climbs higher up the chain of command and that, in fact, _many_ things become significantly more beneficial as one climbs higher up the chair of command. Crossing the threshold into someone else’s room may as well be jumping the wall of a divided Berlin, and thievery of the very last bread roll is a crime punishable by death. Never let them see you cry. Never let them hear you crumble.

These laws are unwritten, nonnegotiable, and almost always determined by birth order, but there is one law that soars above the rest. One law that is absolutely unbreakable. Never— _ever_ —let the enemy know that you might actually give a damn about them.

So, you see, Gordon had only been following the rules.

Maybe that’s why it feels so strange—well, aside from the fact he’s just tied a dishtowel to a wooden spoon. He understands why _that_ part feels a little funny. It’s a joke. It’s _supposed_ to be funny, but the part he doesn’t quite understand is why it’s so hard to call a truce.

He wrings at the wooden handle for just a few moments, working up the courage he needs, and then he holds it up in the air, towel end up, waving his white flag. It’s Virgil who stares him down. “Food ready?”

Gordon shakes his head. “No, but I’m done being an ass and I believe that those were the terms of our agreement.”

Virgil looks doubtful, but beside him, a beaten-up John just smiles. “I have his garlic,” he explains, holding up the head in the palm of his hand. “He needs it for his lasagna and he’s calling a truce in hopes that I won’t chuck it at his head.”

At this, it’s Virgil’s turn to smile, as if John’s the one making jokes these days. “You mean the garlic _he_ threw at _your_ head, John?” he asks, fully aware of the answer. “Is that the one?”

“That’s the one,” John confirms. “Hey, Gordon—why don’t you come _get_ your garlic?”

Gordon looks between his two brothers, side by side, and the scene looks awfully familiar. Lines have been drawn, he notes, and however temporary the alliance, it’s not going to work out well in his favor. “Truce,” he says again, pointing to the flag.

John rolls his eyes in a very Gordon-like way. “I see your dishrag,” he says. “Do you really think I’m going to fight without honor?”

The answer to that question is a resounding _yes_. Gordon’s seen John fight without honor on more than one occasion, and he _knows_ John is more than capable of winning, not because he’s _good,_ but because he’s _advantageous_.

So when John holds out his hand, garlic fresh for the taking, Gordon hesitates, wondering what, exactly, the word _truce_ means to John Tracy.

And then, just when he starts to trust his big brother—a truly fatal move on all accounts—John throws.

Gordon flinches, despite the fact that John would barely be able to lift a feather at the moment, much less chuck a head of garlic at him. Not to mention he’s throwing underhand. This is the part John likes the most, Gordon’s sure. The mind games. Psychology always has been John’s favorite battle strategy.

Gordon has to leap forward to catch it in time, due mostly to the fact that John doesn’t have much of an arm on him at the moment. This results in a solid kick to the coffee table, sending the AED wobbling. All three of them watch it, dancing across wood, and all three of them wonder what’s next—if it will stay standing, or if it will simply fall.

John’s the one who grabs it before they get their answer. “Can we put this thing away yet, or is it a permanent centerpiece on my coffee table?”

Gordon looks to Virgil. Virgil looks to Gordon. In the end, it’s Gordon who answers. “Couple more hours.”

John scoffs. “You’re being totally dramatic. We can’t keep it in here—what if an _actual_ emergency happens? What if someone really needs it?”

The silence that follows is not unfamiliar to the three middle children. It is the silence that comes when Dad only wants to talk to Scott. It is the silence that comes after Alan sheds his tears and gets ice cream for it. This is the silence of being stuck in between, waiting for someone to say something.

And of course, it’s Gordon who breaks the silence. Gordon almost always does. “Honestly, John, _you_ almost really needed it.”

Maybe it’s the smell of tomatoes in the air. Maybe it’s the the feel of John’s gray sweater on his shoulders, or maybe it’s that little white flag hanging limp from Gordon’s fingers, but there’s a moment when the word _truce_ seems much more present than before. There’s a moment when suddenly Gordon’s dramatics don’t feel all that dramatic at all.

But John is a man of the law. A rule-follower somewhere deep in his heart. He will never break the unwritten code of siblings—not so long as it is convenient for him to remain aligned—and so he slumps back into the couch and twists up his nose. “Hurry up with dinner, would ya?” he says. “I’m _literally_ starving under your so-called _care_.”


	9. Chapter 9

Gordon's an asshole, but he can make a lasagna.

It will cost two hundred dollars, but Gordon can make a lasagna.

Gordon makes a lasagna that will feed one gold medal Olympian. It will feed two swimmers at the collegiate level if they cut a line precisely down the middle and accompany it with salad. It will feed three brothers who've had a very long day and a half, if one of them is a former Olympian, the other is in the throes of amphetamine withdrawal, and the third is sort of kind of pretending at being a vegetarian, but can make an exception if the meat in the filling was ethically sourced.

The beef was, the pork in the Italian sausage was not. The veal is anyone's guess.

Gordon's lasagna is a thing of pure beauty. It is cooked in a tinfoil pan, intended for roasting turkeys, four and a half inches deep. In a non-athlete, a corner square is the equivalent of a four mile run. The existence of a pan of Gordon's lasagna once caused a heart attack in a middle-aged man in the apartment next to his, purely by proximity.

This is untrue.

 _However_ , when said middle-aged man _had_ said heart attack, Gordon had needed to borrow a sheet of tinfoil for the top of his lasagna. If he hadn't knocked on his neighbor's door and happened to poke his head in, the heart attack in question would have been fatal. So technically Gordon's lasagna has saved at least one life.

He begins with a pound of grass fed-beef, a pound and a half of hot Italian sausage, and a pound of veal (if he can find it). This is browned in a pan with onions and garlic, while four pounds of Italian San Marzano tomatoes simmer with a half pound of butter and three halved onions, growing velvety and thick, tangy and rich with the fat of the butter. He adds a shake of red pepper flakes for some chest-warming heat, and dried oregano for a bit of earthy depth.

As this reduces and thickens, the meat is cooked through and drained, browned and crisped in a few secret corners of the pan, such as will add another level of flavor. Fennel from the sausage has been distributed evenly throughout the beef and veal, subtle but unmistakeably licorice in flavor; salt and pepper have been added generously. The tomato sauce gets poured over the meat or the meat gets mixed into the tomato sauce, and this gets left on the stove-top to continue at a low, bare simmer, so every disparate element can begin to get friendly with every other.

So that's the sauce.

The pasta is a tricky affair.

Gordon's gotten neurotic about the pasta. The pasta should, technically, be whole grain. His coach had drilled that into him, with all the carbs that go into keeping his body fueled, they should be whole grains. Complex carbs. It's important. But it ruins the lasagna. It makes it dense (in the wrong way), makes the texture all wrong. Whole grain noodles are tough and chewy and hard to cut through, they slow the whole process of consumption down. When one has two hundred dollars’ worth of lasagna to get through, speed is a factor. Noodle texture _matters_.

So it's a crawl through town to find a tiny Italian market. There's always _one_ , and he's become a bloodhound for them. Years and years in hotel suites, swimming competitively, Gordon can find what he needs for his lasagna just about anywhere on Earth. He can always root out the little Italian market. Everything else can come from anywhere else, but a little Italian market is the only place that will have sheets of fresh pasta, hand kneaded and rolled thin. These will be ethereally soft, but thick enough to stand up to the sort of structure he's creating, and made with love by someone's grandmother, laboring in the back of the shop. Gordon is very serious about noodles. He will drop two pounds of fresh pasta on the counter, wink at the cashier, and leave the store gnawing on a gifted piece of biscotti.

But it's the cheese that makes the thing.

Cheese _s_ , plural, no fewer than six. Eight if he's feeling ambitious. Gordon is almost never not feeling ambitious, as at one point in his life he actually won an Olympic gold medal, and an ambitious lasagna was a substantial factor in the fact. So, ricotta. Whole milk ricotta, dense and rich and mild, mixed with dry cottage cheese, for texture and a bit of chew. Into this mix of soft cheeses he folds Parmesan and Romano, nutty and with enough age and salt to add complexity to the body of the dish. He adds chopped spinach, to keep everything healthy, and so he can append the word "Florentine" onto the front of the word "lasagna". This blend of cheese and greenery gets seasoned with salt and pepper and more red chili flakes, and will form a layer an inch and a half thick in the middle of the pan.

It takes a long time to grate the mozzarella, for stringy, classic cheesiness, but Gordon learned a long time ago that you can't buy it pre-grated. It'll be coated in a light dusting of cornstarch to prevent clumping, and the texture will go all funny and wrong, and it won't melt together properly, won't form a single molten sea of cheese across the top of the pan. That's unacceptable. The mozzarella makes up the bulk of it, and it needs to be perfect. Gordon's got arm muscles like taut, banded cords of steel, he can grate two pounds of cheese. No problem. It gets mixed with two secret cheeses, a Dutch Fontina that no one ever sees coming, creamy and pungent, and a smoked Gouda. Gordon's particularly proud about the Gouda. At the very last stage, once everything's assembled, he'll throw five slices of provolone on the top, arranged like the Olympic rings. He's always done it, for luck. Seems no point in stopping now.

Assembly takes a diagram. He can never remember how to start or how he wants to end up or how he needs to divide the sauce so every layer of pasta gets a coating, how to divide the cheese so every layer of noodles has a cheesy buffer against the sauce, or how to make sure there are enough noodles to weave together into the layers that'll hold the thing together. The top has to be wrapped in aluminum foil, so the body can cook without the cheese crisping into a solid mass. He's made that mistake only once.

Bake at 400F. Remove foil at the forty-five minute mark, and brown the cheese on top, until it's bubbling and perfect and the thing looks like it won't wait any longer.

Serve with garlic bread that your speed-freak brother has already eaten an entire half a loaf of.

Hope it makes amends for your atrocious behavior.

* * *

 

The lasagna lands with a dense and determinate _clunk_ atop a table no one’s eaten at in years. Maybe it’s the empty cupboards or maybe it’s the empty dish rack, but Virgil’s got a feeling that the smells of tomato and parsley are the first things to fill this room since John moved in. There’s a lot of things about this apartment that are empty, after all, and it’s starting to look like John himself is at the very top of that list.

Sitting opposite him is Gordon, who looks very, _very_ full of himself.

“Thought you were a vegetarian now,” Gordon says when Virgil takes a hardy helping of pasta.

Virgil glares, settling into the same place he always does: right between John and Gordon. “I’m eating _around_ the meat,” he says.

Gordon just smirks, because he knows he’s got the best damn lasagna in the world and he’s made it his life’s mission to inform everyone else of this fact. “You can just admit it, Virge,” Gordon says, eternally smug. “My lasagna is the best thing you’ve ever tasted—see? John agrees with me, dontcha, Johnny?”

On Virgil’s other side, John scarfs down pasta like he hasn’t had a decent meal in years, and Virgil has to try real hard not to think about how true that might be. He has to try real hard to ignore the questions that nag at him—to stop himself from wondering how things had gotten this bad and how nobody had seen it.

Gordon’s never tried real hard at anything when it comes to John. “So. Are you going to tell us what the hell’s going on, or are you just going to eat all my lasagna and move on?”

“Gordon…” Virgil warns, but John’s already mumbling the words, “Second one,” through a mouthful.

Gordon goes stiff, knuckles white around his fork. “Wrong answer,” he says.

With this, John looks up, taking on an expression that is only ever found on the faces of people for whom wrong answers are a rarity. Both brothers have set jaws and wear a glare that seems to be reserved for one another, so Virgil clears his throat. “I think what Gordon’s trying to say is that we’re a little… concerned.”

“This isn’t like you, John,” Gordon adds.

John’s eyes linger on his kid brother, but then land on the lasagna as if it’s the most bitter thing he’s tasted in his life. “No?” he says, sounding like he disagrees. “This isn’t like me? And how the hell would _you_ know?”

Gordon opens his mouth to respond—and respond _loudly_ —but Virgil’s quick, and he’s even louder. “ _Actually_ , I think John really just means there are two sides to this story.”

“Is that what you think, Virgil?” Gordon says. “Because _I_ think that John’s just being a giant d—”

“Don’t act like you know what you’re talking about when you clearly don’t,” John barks.

“Well, at least I’m not the idiot who thinks that Adderall is—”

“Maybe if you’d shut up and listen for once in your life—”

“ _Enough._ ” The word is loud enough to combat any argument that has ever or will ever cross between Virgil’s two brothers. “You two have been at each other’s throats all weekend and you’re going to _stop_ being at each other’s throats _right now_.”

Both boys open their mouths to protest, but Virgil doesn’t let a sound slip through. “I don’t want to hear it,” he says. “This conflict is going to _end_ and it’s going to end _peacefully_ or… or…” Virgil’s eyes land on the dish of golden pasta, still steaming. “Or neither of you are getting another bite of this lasagna.”

Virgil stands, pulling the tin pan back over to the counter so that they can still smell it. “You’re going to starve us?” John asks.

“Call it a hunger strike,” Virgil replies.

“Pretty sure that _you’re_ the one who’s supposed to go hungry if you initiate a hunger strike,” Gordon says.

“Pretty sure the guy with all the lasagna gets to decide who goes hungry,” Virgil tells them both.

And so John looks at Gordon, and Gordon looks at John, and they decide, for lasagna’s sake, that maybe it’s time to start listening.


	10. Chapter 10

Probably for the best that Virgil's confiscated the lasagna. Last time, John had been so hungry he'd made himself sick trying to keep up with his appetite. Last time he'd been thrown off by the vacillation between rage and utter despair, how his entire capacity to feel functional had been stripped right out of him. Last time he'd given up, last time he'd failed.

John's never been great with failure.

And he's still _hungry_ , but Virgil has generously permitted the garlic bread to remain on the table, so he takes the crusty heel of the loaf and tears an enormous bite out of it, chews his way through it to buy himself time to figure out what to say. He really doesn't know what he's supposed to say.

Well. Except that's something.

"I dunno what you want me to say," he starts, and lets Virgil give Gordon the warning look, so he's permitted to continue. "I'm smarter than you are, and, frankly, smarter than you're ever likely to _be_ , Gordon. So I don't know where you come away with the idea that I don't know exactly what I've done to myself. I'm not an idiot."

Gordon scoffs at this, picking crumbs of garlic and flecks of parsley off the surface of his own slice of bread, stacking them in a little pile at the edge of his plate. "Not a garden-variety idiot, anyway, but there's plenty of ways to be stupid, Johnny. Poisoning your central nervous system with amphetamines seems pretty damn stupid to me."

Virgil clears his throat, warning that Gordon's edging into the territory of incivility, but John's not really that bothered. He's told himself plenty of times how stupid he's being. What he hasn't told himself is that he needs help if he wants to beat this. What he hasn't admitted is that he actually _does_ want to beat this. It'd be so much easier to let it beat him. "I know that. I've just told you I know that."

"Well, _why_ , then? God damn, Johnny, we all _know_   you're smart. You're the smart one, Dad pointed it out any time anyone came home with anything less than a B-plus. It's just _Harvard_. Your IQ is, like, what, a hundred and twenty?"

It's a hundred and thirty-four, but it's by no means a reliable way of measuring intelligence. Or capacity for learning. Or whether or not someone's been put somewhere that they don't belong. "Yeah, well. There's plenty of ways of being smart, too. And I'm not this kind of smart."

Gordon blinks at him, and John has to remind himself that he's only twenty, that he's only been in school for two years, that he's dumb as a goddamn post, sometimes, with his 3.4 GPA. John's is 3.9 and hasn't once dipped lower. Gordon's brain's been chlorinated. He folds his arms and leans back in his chair, and the hard plastic edges of the back dig into his shoulder blades, his spine. Stupid, cheap chairs. The apartment was pre-furnished, something his father had set up on his behalf. John eats standing up, usually in the corner of the kitchen. He can't remember if he's used the chairs in question for anything other than changing light bulbs in the entire two years he's been at Harvard.

God, it's been two _years_. It had taken the entire first year for John to realize it wasn't just homesickness. It wasn't just the difficulty of settling in. It wasn't just collegiate level courses, because honestly, it's not hard. John has an IQ of a hundred and thirty-four; very little presented in your average business course is actually _hard_ , in the abstract sense. Non-Euclidean geometry is hard. Pure mathematics is _hard_. _Astrophysics_ is hard. Realizing that he honestly and truly hated his life in college. That had been _hard_.

But Gordon's a very particular kind of stupid, and he's got a knack for saying precisely the stupidest possible thing. So he's leaned his chin on his hands and he's peering at John from beneath an arched eyebrow, and saying, "C'mon, Johnny. It's not rocket science."

* * *

John won’t talk to anyone. John’s the brother who spends entire weekends in his bedroom—who only comes out at night, when the stars are calling to him and no one’s awake to interrupt his thoughts. John’s the brother who sits at the breakfast table with headphones on, listening to the latest podcast from the International Space Station. John won’t talk to anyone. Doesn’t _like_ talking to anyone. Can’t talk to anyone, and Gordon’s never understood that about his brother, because Gordon’s always had words waiting on the tip of his tongue.

John won’t say the words, but it just so happens that Gordon did, and now both of them are wishing he hadn’t.

Because it’s _not_ rocket science. And that’s the whole goddamn problem.

There’s a hole in Gordon’s gut and he’s got a feeling that the lasagna he just scarfed down is going to come right back up. It always surprises him, the impact that a bunch of words can have—the way they can lift a person up and bring them back down. Gravity, he supposes, or something like that. There’s definitely some sort of weight involved. “ _Oh_.”

There’s a bookcase in John’s living room and Gordon hadn’t even considered the idea that it wasn’t the only thing in this apartment split between two separate worlds. “Jesus Christ, John. It’s _not rocket science_.”

The words seem to strike even harder the second time, because John’s jaw turns back to stone. “Message _received_ ,” he says. “I’m studying business. At Harvard. _So_ nice of you to notice.”

John won’t talk to anyone, so Gordon’s not sure how their father expects him to navigate _Harvard_. Hell, Gordon had spent less than an hour playing cards at a party and in that time he had encountered at least a dozen name drops, twenty-two claims of superiority, and a startling amount of supercilious douchebaggery that took place exclusively through subtle, graceless examples of passive aggression.

Ask John to point out a blip in a code and he can do it in a heartbeat. The finer nuances of sidestepped conversation—not so much. In that way, John’s the stupid one.

John talks to Alan, though, and Alan had known. Alan had even called because he had known that John is _built_ for rocket science. Shit. _Shit_. “Johnny,” Gordon says, leaning forward in his chair, across that bare table in that empty kitchen of that lifeless apartment. “Why are you doing _anything except_ rocket science?”


	11. Chapter 11

"Why did you go after a gold medal?" John asks in answer, and hates how bitter and cynical he's gotten about it. "Did _you_ really want to, or did Dad put the idea in your head?"

Gordon blinks at him, really and honestly bewildered. "Uh. Well, _yeah_ I wanted to. You don't go for a gold medal if you don't really _want it_. You have to want it."

John shakes his head, and remembers a younger brother who used to swim purely for the love of swimming. Remembers Gordon before his vaguely competitive nature had been sharpened into a razor's edge by their father's nudging and prodding. "Yeah? Tell me, does he refer to you as 'my son, Gordon', or 'my son, the Olympian'?" John doesn't let him get a word in before he continues, "Because he calls _me_ 'the one at Harvard'."

There's that anger creeping in again, the part he hates most about this whole process. Worse than the fatigue, worse than the cravings and the hunger and the slow, tumbling fall into despair—it's the frightening, unexpected flares of anger, blazing up out of him like they've been waiting below the surface for the coals to be raked over. Like he's always _been_ angry, and needs something to keep it under control. John hates to be drunk and he hates to be angry, he hates to feel like he's not in control.

Which is the quintessential fact of why he hates his life at Harvard.

But Gordon's not taking any classes about business. Gordon's taking a mishmash of courses, a handful of humanities, a handful of sciences, but he's meandering his way towards a Bachelor of Sciences in aquatic biology. What use _that's_ supposed to be, hell if John knows, but at least Gordon got the _choice_ not to learn anything useful. If Gordon were studying the sort of useful things John's supposed to be studying, he'd know that people are commodities, even if they're your sons. He'd know that relationships are a means of employing leverage, know that everything in the world has a cost. That his time at Harvard is something his father can point to as marketable, that he's already grooming a protégé, a successor.

Virgil and Gordon are staring and John realizes that maybe he'd sounded more bitter than he meant to. This is why he's bad at Harvard, the sorts of silences that fall in the middle of conversations, where he's not sure if he's said the wrong thing. Every word that's actively going unsaid crawls and prickles beneath his skin and his fingertips find the holes in the weave of his sweater, wend their way through to dig into his skin, his arms crossed over his chest and wrapped over each other. He doesn't want to talk about this. "It doesn't matter why I'm here," he mutters finally, sinking in his chair. "I am, and I couldn't cut it, and I did something stupid. I don't need to be told that."

It's Virgil who speaks next, for once, not Gordon. Virgil's got a lot more faith in their father than John has, and hesitantly he says, "Dad wouldn't want you doing this to yourself, J. He'd—I mean, he's not gonna be happy, but he wouldn't have wanted you to go this far for what you thought he wanted. Why didn't you quit?"

That's the sort of question Virgil would ask. It's the sort of question that has John meet Gordon's stare across the table, and there's understanding in his younger brother's eyes, light dawning on the bridge between them, that thing they have in common. So it's Gordon who answers, "Because you _can't_ quit. You just wouldn't, would you? You're not wired that way."

And John laughs. It's not funny, but he laughs anyway and slumps over the kitchen table with his head on his arms. He's still hungry, but he knows that won't stop. Too much food will make him sick. He's still tired, but he's going to be tired for days. Sleep won't help. He wants nothing more than to stop feeling the way he feels, but that's not an option unless he wants to make an emergency call to his dealer. Or unless he dips into the emergency stash hidden in his closet. He doesn't want to be the sort of person who has a dealer _or_ an emergency stash, but Gordon's right. Quitting hadn't been an option. He'd never even considered it. There'd only been the need to find a way to push himself through.

Virgil clears his throat and there's a hand on his shoulder, an awkward, comforting pat. "You know you've gotta stop, right? John? Doesn't matter if it means quitting school, you just, you can't keep doing this. You'll kill yourself."

Cognitively, yes. He knows he has to stop. John's known it ever since he started, that one day he'd have to stop. He'd been supposed to make it through to graduation before that, though. But this isn't the first time he's been here, isn't the first time he's felt like this. "I did try," he admits, softly, before he means to and he's surprised by how tired he sounds. He'd hoped to hold out a little longer against the yawning draw of fatigue; he's only been awake for a few hours. "God, but it's _hard_. I've dug myself so deep, I don't think I'll get out. And...and—if Dad finds out, he's just...Christ. Gordon, he gave you _options_. I won't get options. Not after this kind of failure, not if I can't...if I can't figure this out. He'll cut me off and turn me loose, and that'll...it'll just be it."

"I'm not gonna tell him, John," Gordon promises, but he's chewing his lower lip. "And I'm sorry I've been such an ass, I just—I hate it, you know, seeing anybody do something so...so _awful_ to themselves. We're made of meat and bone and brain matter and that's all we _are_. At the end of the day, your body's all you've got. That kinda disrespect, I just can't get my head around it."

This earns a defeated sort of shrug and suddenly the conversation's more than John really wants to have, because it's about something that's been true for too long, "I guess I don't feel like what I've got is worth having."

And he doesn't want to say any more. He drops his head again, and buries his face in the soft wool of his sleeves. John's got it in common with Gordon that neither of them will quit. But it's a difference between them that John can be beaten.

* * *

Gordon remembers his State Finals of his freshman year very clearly. Event eight, heat three, lane six. He’d gone nearly the entire day with _E8 H3 L6_ written out on the inside of his wrist, terrified that he might forget them. It had been important, after all. Scholarships and records, sure, but most importantly, the next step towards Olympic gold. Recognition. Offers. Sponsorships.

He’d come in second to last—not in his heat, but in his entire event. Twenty-third place.

His coach had expected him to come in fourth, but had brushed it off as a bad day, which Gordon knew _could_ happen, but it usually _didn’t_ happen at States. His teammates had reminded him that being a freshman in the final heat of a State race was nothing to scoff at, and that he’d have another three years to try. The swim moms had all told him he’d had a good race, stuffed him full of the post-meet pasta, and then more than a few girls had complimented him on his _stroke_ as he ate.

The car ride home had been a different story.

It’s not that Dad doesn’t care—in fact, it’s just the opposite. Dad _does_ care, and he cares _a lot_ , which is probably why it had taken so long for him to say something. The first hour had been silence, but by the second hour, the number _twenty-three_ seemed too big to fit in his father’s economically friendly car. Gordon had broken first, because Gordon _always_ breaks first, listing off all the _should have_ s and the _could have done_ s and the _faulty swim cap_ s. Dad had listened but Gordon could tell he’d been formulating a response, which was then confirmed in a series of _try harder next time_ s.

It had been a loud few minutes that had felt dragged out and raw and painful, eventually leading to Gordon saying the words, “Then maybe I’ll just _quit_.”

Which had then led Jeff to say, “You’re not going to quit. You love swimming—and you’re a Tracy. Tracys don’t quit, _you_ most of all. You’re not wired that way.”

He had been right, and Gordon’s glad for it. It had been exactly the thing he’d needed to hear, because coaches and teammates will always remind you of your potential. Swim moms and cute girls will always say you raced well. But Jeff Tracy would tell you the truth and in Gordon’s mind, the truth was that Tracys didn’t quit. That fact had been in his head through every hard practice, every sore stroke, and every twisted up flip turn, all the way up to the gold. For Gordon, the words had described a part of him he’d already known, but hadn’t quite been able to name. They had been the answer to a question he’d been asking for years. Why couldn’t he just _stop_? Answer: he just wasn’t wired that way. Mystery solved.

Fast forward a few years and now Gordon’s looking at his brother—really _looking_ —and he’s seeing that little bit of himself in John. He sees that drive, that passion, that unyielding need to _go_ for something, or else not bother with anything at all. He sees a brother who had been _actively killing himself_ and hadn’t minded all that much, because John’s broken. He’s broken real bad. Tracys don’t quit and John had worked himself into dust, because that’s just the way he’s wired.

Gordon doesn’t know what it feels like to be that broken. Gordon knows numb and hopeless and empty just fine, but he doesn’t know broken. He hopes he never does. “Listen to me, Johnny,” he says. “If you weren’t worth having, then you wouldn’t have _been had_ , alright? I learned about it in Ecology. Symbiosis or something—”

It’s not the right way to use symbiosis, and Gordon knows that. More importantly, he knows that _John_ knows that. “Symbiosis is a relationship between two different biological species that serves a purpose,” he says, like he knows it’s got nothing to do with the matter at hand.

Gordon smiles. “That’s what I’m saying. One thing doesn’t exist without another thing needing it—everything without a purpose dies out, keels over, kaput.”

“That’s not true either,” John tells him. “Everything without a purpose eventually evolves into one. _Everything_ has a reason, Gordon.”

There’s a beat as John’s words echo back to him, and suddenly he sees the trap that’s been set. He gives Gordon a look that suggests he may see just a little bit more in that kid brother of his, so Gordon just shrugs. “You’re probably right,” he says. “I mean, what do I know? I’ve only got a 3.4.”


	12. Chapter 12

Talk gives way to second servings, second servings give way to third, and then the fatigue that comes with fullness and the disbelief that between the three of them they'd eaten the whole thing. For Virgil and Gordon it stops at a vague sense of satisfaction. John misses the step and stumbles, slides back down into utter exhaustion.

But contempt has given way to understanding, and understanding to kindness, and Virgil offers to clean up the kitchen while John drags himself back over to the couch and curls up in the corner of it with his arms wrapped around a pillow. "I feel awful," he mumbles to no one in particular, but Gordon's around to hear.

And he's sympathetic for the first time since he'd found out what the score was, and he picks a blanket up and drops it on top of his brother. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. I didn't mean that you deserve it. 'M sorry, John. I dunno when it's gonna get better."

"I never stuck it out long enough to tell if it _does_ get better." John shudders and nestles himself further against the arm of the couch, feels like a collection of long, awkward limbs strung together by aching fatigue, tangled all through him like a marionette dropped in a heap. "The cravings I can handle. Mostly. It's just...feeling like I'm gonna up and _die_. That's what got me every time I tried before."

"Well, we'll stick it out with you. Get through the first few days, after that it's gotta start to even out. Just...I mean, you need to get it out of your system. Need to learn to do without it. It's gonna suck. But we'll help, me and Virgil, for as long as we can."

"I don't think I can do it." There's that not-funny laugh again. "Tracys don't quit," he quotes, and buries his face in the pillow with a groan. "God, and I won't be able to face it all like this. Harvard. Feeling like _this_. I have to go back and I have to take all these stupid classes with these stupid people and I hate it here, _so_ goddamn much. Wish I'd sold my soul to _drop out_ instead of to stay in."

Gordon's quiet for a long time and when John lifts his face again, the blond is chewing his lower lip and looking conflicted. "Take a few months off?" he suggests tentatively. "You...you know, you're right, I don't think you can go back like this. The sort of people you're going to school with, one look at you in _this_ state..." He trails off, shrugs. "I dunno, John. I'm starting to wonder if...if, uh...maybe..."

"What?"

"Maybe _you_ should tell Dad."

John flinches at the suggestion and it's a non-option. "He'll disown me. He'll cut me off and throw me out, like he would've done to you if you hadn't cleaned up your act. No. No, I can't, he'd...he wouldn't ever forgive me."

Gordon's not convinced, and he leans forward in the armchair he's taken a seat in, engages. "See, I dunno about that. It was different with me, I didn't wanna be stopped. You wanna get outta this, and you've _tried_. That counts for something. One thing with Dad, he doesn't dwell on _problems_. He's a results guy. You'll get your ass dragged a bit, but I bet more than anything he'd wanna help you get better, first and foremost. And there's ways it can be easier on you, Johnny. I've had friends go through rehab. It's not as bad as it's made out to be."

"Maybe," John answers, though he knows he sounds doubtful. He doesn't want to think farther into the future than about ten minutes, nor farther outside his current sphere than about as far as his apartment door. Even beyond the end of the couch is a stretch. "I'll think about it," he promises, not intending to do so. "I'm just trying to get through the rest of today."

Gordon nods, pulls his legs up and sits cross-legged in the armchair by the couch. "Wanna watch a movie or something?" he suggests, changes the subject. "Keep your brain busy. C'mon, pick something, I'll download it."

John's not sure he remembers the last time he watched a movie. He's not a hundred percent sure his brain will stay on track long enough to follow a plot, but—well, if Gordon's decided to be nice anyway— "Cosmos?" he asks hopefully.

There's a silence filled with Virgil splashing dishes in the kitchen sink, and Gordon's expression twists into pained tolerance. "...really?"

"Well, you've been very mean."

"Yeah, but it's from the last _century_."

"It has staying power."

"Oh... _fine_. But we're gonna alternate Sagan with David Attenborough, talking about actual _living things_ , or I'm going to jump off the roof."

John shrugs, willing to compromise. Gordon grumbles and grouses, but gets everything set up, and Virgil finishes up in the kitchen and drops down onto the end of the couch, giving his brother's feet a shove so he tucks himself up on one cushion, the old family rule. The sun sets outside, the city darkens, and the lights stay dim. Soon enough the apartment is filled by the swell of strings and piano and a strong, passionate voice talking about the things John loves. He's asleep in ten minutes. Gordon leaves it on anyway, and he and Virgil have a whispered argument about who gets the bed, and who has to sleep in the armchair.

* * *

John’s pretty much passed out on the couch and if he isn’t, he’s about to be, but Gordon still feels like he needs to leave the room for his next conversation. He’s going to stay true to his word—he’s not going to tell Dad—but damned if he doesn’t want to. Damned if he doesn’t want this to just be _done_.

Carl Sagan’s voice is grainy through the tiny speakers on his laptop, so it’s a surprise to Gordon when Dad picks up the phone with a voice like steel. In that dark hallway of John’s empty apartment, there’s no denying the clear, booming power that comes behind the name _Jeff Tracy_. “Gordon. It’s late.”

“Sorry,” Gordon says, and he takes a moment to curse at himself for not noticing the time. There’s only one kind of call Gordon’s ever made at this hour, and usually the whiskey’s so strong on his breath it can be smelled through the phone. “Sorry, are you in bed? I can call back—”

“No, I’m already up. Do you need—?”

“I’m fine, Dad,” Gordon insists, and maybe his father believes it, because the words come out crystal clear. “I’m with John, actually.”

There’s a pause on the line and then Dad speaks in a way that suggests Gordon’s proximity to John is far more dangerous than any other scenario that had been running through his head. “Oh?”

“Yeah—well, I mean, Virgil’s here too,” he replies, kicking at nothing, moving just so he doesn’t have to stay still. “He’s the one who dragged me out here in the first place.”

The relief in his father’s voice is _audible_. “Oh. I see,” he says. “And you just thought you’d call your old man up? See how he’s doing?”

Gordon can’t stop a huff before it leaves him. Jeff Tracy didn’t become the man he is today without an outrageous amount of perceptiveness. “I was wondering if maybe you could do me a favor—us. Do _us_ a favor.”

“Uh-huh,” Dad says, not entirely joking, but not entirely serious either. “What do you need?”

“A pool.”

“A pool?”

“Spring break,” Gordon says with a silent shrug. “All the good ones are rented out already and I was thinking that maybe you’d have some pull in this area.”

It’s a fact known universally that Jeff Tracy does, in fact, have a great deal of pull on and just past the Harvard campus. It’s the sort of thing he doesn’t let people forget, so they both know Dad’s pull isn’t the problem here. Nope. The problem is Gordon. The problem is always Gordon. “What do you need a pool for? Swimming laps?”

That’s when Gordon looks at his older brother, weighed down and heavy. John looks limp and sore, balled up in a sweater that’s too big, and Gordon knows he’s hurting. It’s hard, coming back up from a fall, and Gordon really only knows one way to make it _less_ hard. Truth is, he just wants to give John that same way out—those precious few hours of _letting go._

But Gordon can’t explain that without explaining a few things about John, and more than that, it’s not what Dad expects him to say. “Oh, you know… there’s a couple of girls and—”

“Say no more,” Dad says, which is good because Gordon doesn’t actually _have_ anything more. “You said your brothers are there? If I call John right now he’s going to tell me he’s keeping an eye on you?”

“Yessir.”

“And you’re staying out of trouble? Not doing anything that could endanger—?”

“Yessir.”

That much is true. Gordon’s clean. Gordon’s been clean for a while now. Dad doesn’t even think to ask about John, because the only trouble John gives him is the occasional argument; meanwhile, Gordon can’t _stop_ thinking about John.

“Hey, um, Dad?” There’s a grunt, which Gordon takes as his cue to continue. “If I did mess up again—hypothetically—would you… would you really _hate_ me?”

Gordon’s still watching John, remembering the desperate pleas of a broken brother, but his focus is locked on his father’s voice. There’s a distinctly wary groan somewhere at the end of his father’s strict sentences. “Are you going to mess up again?” he asks.

Gordon’s heart burrows its way to his stomach, because even though he’s done nothing wrong, he can’t help feeling like he has. “Trying real hard not to.”

There’s a thoughtful, “Mmm,” from the opposite end and a silence that feels far longer than it should. Dad’s cautious when he answers, very clearly trying to choose his words carefully. “I think that as long as you’re trying, it would be very hard for me to hate you.”

Gordon’s focus shifts to his older brother—to Jeff Tracy’s very own fallen angel, who only ever _tries_ —and he figures that John’s gonna be okay. John’s gonna be just fine.

“I’ll see what I can do about that pool,” Dad says.

“Thanks,” Gordon says back. “Oh—and, uh, Dad?”

“Hmm?”

In the other room, Carl Sagan goes on about galaxies and worlds unknown. “Make it someplace where you can see the stars.”


	13. Chapter 13

They touch down in LA at the end of the week, as the sight of the stars fades from the sky, gives way to the new dawn. They get a cab from the airport, they take it to their father's office. John's the only one who needs to talk to their father. Gordon and Virgil are along for moral support.

It had taken wheedling, it had taken convincing, in the end it had taken the outright admission that Gordon and Virgil really were worried about him, for John to admit that he can't beat this alone. That he needs help. That he needs the sort of discreet, private help their father will be able to arrange.

It's the last day of March and the last day of spring break. Dad's office is fifty stories in the air, and the waiting room outside it is sleek, architectural, and empty of anyone but his three middle sons, sharing a long, low bench in front of some hunk of monolithic modern art. The far wall is all windows, the floor is poured concrete. Through frosted glass behind them, a workshop hums and bustles, but none of this life or movement touches the room outside their father's office. The place is, in a word, bleak.

The bench is just a pain in the ass.

It's narrow. It's uncomfortable, there's no backrest to lean against. Gordon's not entirely sure it's not another piece of art. Jeff Tracy is uninterested in the comfort of the people he keeps waiting, and, further, he likes to set the mood of the people who come to see him. It's cruel, unusual, and effective.

It's probably the last thing in the world John needs right now, and he's got his face in his hands again, pale and more visibly anxious than either Gordon or Virgil have ever seen him.

So the bench isn't helping, but the pacing had been worse, so it's Gordon, Virgil, with John in the middle. Gordon's got a hand on his older brother's shoulder, Virgil's trying to make himself comfortable, and squinting at the slab of brushed aluminum in the middle of the room.

"I think," Virgil muses, possibly trying to break the mood, though you never can tell with art students, "it's about the decline of the textile industry."

"I think that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say in my entire life. That is _amazing_ ," Gordon marvels, and squints at the strange metal structure. "Wow. Yeah. No, that makes _no_ goddamn sense. Johnny, back me up? What d'you think?"

"I think I'm gonna throw up and then I think I'm gonna die."

Gordon rubs his brother's shoulders, like he's a teammate next up for a race and needs to be psyched up. "It's gonna be okay," he promises. "Honest John, it'll work out. You got a lot going for you, c'mon. You didn't even have to be frogmarched in here by Scott and Virgil. Came entirely of your own accord. That'll count for a lot."

"Why's he making me _wait_?"

Virgil cuts the pretension, pretended or not, and adds, "Because he's just—Dad's a busy guy. He's not torturing you, it's not a test, J. You don't need to be paranoid about it. Not much longer, and we'll just get it over with."

"Yeah," Gordon agrees. "We're gonna get through this just fine."

It's the _we_ that helps, that has the redhead taking a few deep, steadying breaths and nodding. There's a bottle of not-aspirin in his pocket, but only one tablet in the bottle. One single pill, the last of a stash he'd had hidden in his closet, the one he'd broken down and nearly broken into, before Gordon and Virgil had made him stop. The rest had been thrown away, but he'd kept one on Gordon's advice.

"Every day you don't take it is one day closer," Gordon tells him again, as his brother turns the bottle over and over in his long, nervous fingers. "As long as there's a pill in that bottle, you're beating this thing."

"I don't feel like I'm winning."

Gordon, possibly the only one of his brothers who really and truly knows what winning feels like, gives John a crooked grin. "That's the funny thing about winning. Everything leading up to it is just really damn hard work. And I _know_ you've got that in you, Johnny. One of these days, you'll know when you've won."

The door of their father's office opens, and all three of them are on their feet. John looks ready to bolt for the elevator; Virgil catches him by the collar before he can move and then it's a rough, bullying bear hug. "You'll be okay, John."

Gordon's next, once Virgil finishes breaking John's ribs, and it's a tight, brief embrace, with another squeeze of John's shoulder. "Dad won't hate you," he promises. "And on the million to one chance he does, _we_ won't. He _can't_ throw you out of the family, John. I promise you'll always have us."

This gets a wordless nod and an answering clasp of Gordon's arm, and then John straightens up and slips the pill bottle into his pocket. He doesn't look back as he crosses the waiting room, and disappears into the door of their father's office.

* * *

John hasn't been out to the coast since he'd been summoned for an intervention on Gordon's behalf. Jeff hasn't risen from behind his desk as John slips in the door. The distance stretching across his father's office seems further than he can manage. But there's no going back now, and his hand tightens on the little white bottle as he crosses the room and stops at his father's desk. "Hello, Dad."

Jeff's not the sort of man who leads a conversation with "hello", so John's not surprised when his father's eyes pass over him, and there's a critical quirk of his expression. "I hope you plan on getting some sun while you're out here, John. You're looking a bit peaked."

John wonders if the understatement is deliberate, because he knows he looks _terrible_. He knows he's pale, knows his eyes are dark and his face has gotten a little gaunt, a little drawn from stress and the slow, interminable crawl through three days without anything stronger than caffeine in his system. He has to swallow and wet his lips before he can answer, and it doesn't sound like his voice when he says, "Spring Break ends tomorrow. I don't think I'll have time for much sun."

"Mm. Poor time management. What's got you booking my eight-thirty slot, John? And what merits a flight all the way across the country?"

John's so nervous he feels sick. Gordon had been here, in their father's high court, and Gordon had been _angry_. It's the thing that had earned the younger brother most of John's contempt, so many years ago, the fact that he'd been too arrogant to admit he was wrong. That sat in front of their father, hungover and disheveled, he'd still been defiant. John's not defiant, he's deeply, profoundly ashamed, and anxious to the point that he's almost lightheaded. He pulls the little bottle out of his pocket and puts it on the sleek glass top of his father's desk. His legs nearly go out from under him as it leaves his hand, and he has to sit down.

His father's eyebrow arches and he takes the aspirin bottle, gives it a shake. That single pill hits the side of the bottle the way John's heart feels like it's hitting his ribs, and his father spins the lid off, tips a tiny golden circle into his palm. "What's this?"

"Adderall."

And for a moment there's confusion on Jeff's features. "Since when do you need Adderall?" A pause. "Virgil's supposed to be the one taking something for...what, it's depression, isn't it? Is he still doing that? What's this about, John?"

"It's not prescription." John's pretty sure his throat's actually closed up, so he's not sure where the words are coming from. "I've got an...I. I mean, I—I've got a problem."

His father processes this. The pill gets tipped back into the bottle, the lid goes back on. Jeff gets up and goes to the window, turns his back on his second son. When he finally speaks, his voice is soft and terrifies John, but then, pretty much anything would have, at this point. "Does anyone know?"

John shakes his head vehemently and then remembers that it's not quite no one. Not anymore. If it were no one, he'd have seen his brothers off and gone right back to what he was doing before they'd dropped into the middle of his life and turned it upside down. "Virgil. Uh, a-and Gordon. Gordon's the one who...who found out. I didn't—I m-mean, I don't think anyone else knows. Not that I can tell. No one I go to school with."

"Who gave you this? Is this from a doctor?"

"Not my doctor. I don't...I was careful. I've been really careful, I've never met the guy. Not in person, he doesn't know who I am. It's just, it was a drop off system. A locker at the gym on campus." It's surreal to tell his father this. "I was careful, Dad. I swear no one knows."

Jeff turns and his eyes flash and John's cold all over, frozen. "That's not my concern. You might've been given _anything_. You might've been poisoned. What in the world possessed you to do something so stupid?" There's a pause and Jeff knows exactly what to say to shame his second son. "This is the sort of nonsense I expected from _Gordon_ over spring break. _Club drugs_ , John, honestly. I understand your college years are meant to be a certain amount of fun, but it's really not in your character to—"

His father's jumped to the wrong conclusion, and John has a terrible problem with correcting people. His father's not a man who's used to being interrupted, let alone interrupted to be told that he's _wrong_. "It's not spring break. It's not just spring break, it's...i-it's been a year. Year and a half."

"And how did _Gordon_ happen to catch you at this?"

"I...I overdid it. I just, I slipped up a little, I was...we went to a party and...it got so Virgil thought something was wrong. Gordon...I dunno. I don't know if he suspected or i-if it was just luck he found out. I didn't want to tell you. Gordon and Virgil have...I mean, they've been...around...over the week." He manages to lift his gaze for a moment and meet his father's dark, furious eyes. "I wouldn't have told you if they hadn't...if... Gordon told me. To tell you. I need help. I'm sorry, Dad, I'm so sorry."

"You might've _killed yourself_."

John just nods. It's been made clear. Jeff's silent stare seems worse than anything he could say. John's being weighed in some balance, and his father's eyes seem to be seeing him for the first time since he sat down. He leaves the window and sits back down. "You look ill," he notes, and it's an accusation.

John nods again, swallows. "Withdrawal."

" _Withdrawal_." Jeff's jaw has tightened and he reaches for the tablet on his desk, hits a button. "You're in withdrawal from an amphetamine addiction, and you're _here_. Telling _me_ about it. My _god_ , John. Have you seen a doctor?"

John shakes his head and manages to take a deep breath. "Gordon wanted to call an ambulance, but it would've gone to the campus hospital and...I knew I couldn't—I mean, I didn't want anyone to find out. I did my best to keep it private. It's not like what he did. No one knows, Dad, I _swear_ I—"

" _That is not the issue_." There's the roll of thunder in his voice, the one Virgil echoes without meaning to. "A year and a half, someone should have known _far sooner._ Not another word, John Glenn Tracy. My afternoon's been cleared. I'll have my personal physician here in an hour to have a look at you. You will waive your right to confidentiality and I'll have a full report about your condition. I'll decide what's to be done with you once your health isn't in question. Is that clear?"

Permitted to say anything or not, John's not sure his voice would hold out. He manages the barest nod and stares at the floor.

Jeff stands and John's reminded that his father's not taller than he is. He still feels impossibly small in his chair in front of the broad glass desk. "You'll wait here. I need a word with your brothers."

"I would've taken off if they'd tried to tell you. It's not their fault it took this long, I just, I didn't—"

" _Not another word, John_."

And that silences him. The sound of his father's footsteps towards the door behind him fade, and as it closes, John slumps in his chair and tries to decide if it's gone better or worse than he'd expected.

* * *

There’s a locked door between John and Gordon again, but things are different now.  There’s no secrets this time.

Gordon knows at his core everything will be fine, but it’s not going to be easy.  John has a history of being definitively _not fine_ when it comes to Dad’s big voice, and Gordon can hear that distinct not-yell through the walls.  When they were kids, this would have been the time when Gordon took over—rambled on about how mean the librarian who kicked them out had been or how they really shouldn’t lay out a bunch of free samples if they only want you to take one.  This is the part when Gordon smooth talks the two of them out of this mess, except Gordon’s on the wrong side of the door.

And then, just like that, he’s not.

There’s something horribly determined about the way Jeff Tracy walks that makes you _believe_  he founded a Fortune 500 business at his dining room table.  There’s a power in his step, a flame in his eye, and a definite fear in whoever stands opposed to him.  “Boys.”

Virgil’s up in the time it takes for Dad’s voice to fill the room.  Gordon had already been standing and Dad looks directly at _him_ when he’d addressed _both_ of them.  This is a frequent habit of their father’s, as if he knows who the brunt of the blame belongs to and has no interest in hiding it.

Gordon doesn’t know that his father secretly admires the way his second youngest son stands tall, despite being the only one who will grow up to be shorter than him.  Gordon doesn’t know about his father’s pride when it comes to the huff in his chest or the set in his jaw, but it’s there, piled beneath mountains of rage and tempers and How Dare Hes.  It’s there.

Gordon doesn’t see it.  Gordon never will.

“Your brother has just told me the situation.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gordon feels his father’s eyes as they scan him up and down.  “Must feel good, getting one up on John after all these years.”

“He needs _help_ , Dad,” Gordon tells him.  “I didn’t one-up him—he’s _sick_.”

The nod is slow.  Considerate.  “Of course, of course,” he says.  “I just mean that it must feel good, finally getting to marshal him up to my office.  He was pretty righteous with you when he was on the other side of that desk.”

Gordon doesn’t know that John has told their father that he was the one to find out.  He doesn’t know that John has credited him as the vote for an ambulance, the vote to tell Dad, the vote to do things the correct way, and that John has taken the full blame for his actions.  He doesn’t know that his father is, somewhere deep down, grateful, because Gordon only knows one thing: John doesn’t have time for the two of them to play games.

“To tell you the truth, it feels like shit,” he says, and there’s a gulp at the end of his sentence, like he’s ten years old again and his father won’t accept that kind of language.

Dad’s not fond of it, but he can respect it.

“Look,” Gordon says.  “He screwed up—that much has been made clear and I’m pretty sure he’d have known it even if Virgil and I hadn’t spent the week hammering it into his head.”

“You did the hammering,” Virgil corrects.  “I just bought the kid some food and did some laundry.”

“Either way,” Gordon says, “he’s already gotten plenty of flak from me, so with all due respect, sir, I don’t think he needs any more from you.”  

The way Gordon speaks to his father is so vastly different from the last time they were in this building that both men take a moment to make sure they really are in the same place.  When this is confirmed, Gordon continues.  “He needs a _dad_. We’ve done what we can.  He doesn’t listen to me—never has—”

“Is that so?”

“You know it is.”

“Do not tell me what I know, Gordon Cooper,” he says, and that’s Gordon’s cue to stop talking.  Once the middle names are out, it’s all over.  “You both lied to me or, at the very least, you deceived me, and that’s unacceptable.  I expected more from you, Virgil.”

This manages to hit both boys particularly hard, Virgil having failed him in this regard and Gordon having failed him in every other.

“You will both be facing consequences for your actions,” he informs them, “but at the moment I’m debating what I’m going to do with your brother.”

Gordon doesn’t know that his father has played him like a fiddle.  He doesn’t know that he’s been identified as the captain of Team John and that his father’s counting on Gordon to tell him exactly what John needs right now.  “Jesus _Christ,_ Dad.  I mean seriously—god—he doesn’t need consequences.  He needs a _break_.”

“You think so?”

“He didn’t start that stuff because he wanted the _high_ ,” Gordon spits out, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  His father gives him a look that there will be no need for him to raise his voice again, but Gordon is too worked up to notice.  “He’s _exhausted_.  He hates it there—have you seen his apartment?  You’d think someone died in there, Dad, I swear to god.  And he’s got this damn _bookshelf_ —”

“I think what Gordon’s trying to say,” Virgil says, ever the translator, “is that John’s not happy where he is.”

“ _No_ , what I’m trying to say is that John _hates_ everything about Harvard, but he won’t say so because he’s too scared of what _you’ll_ think.”

“Gordon—”

Virgil stops when his father holds up his hand to him.  Gordon, due to his proximity to the definite gesture, chokes on his next sentence before he can even start.  “I hear you,” Dad says, and there’s too much diplomacy in his words for either boy to feel as though he’s being sincere.  At least, until he says, “John’s going to see a doctor, and we can discuss what to do while we’re waiting.  Sound doable?”

Gordon almost seems surprised by how doable that sounds.  “Yessir.”

Dad nods.  “You can go talk to your brother now,” he says.  “He’s going to want to see you more than he wants to see me.”

Virgil doesn’t wait for a second invitation.  He’s in Dad’s office in the time it takes a heart to beat.  Gordon’s not far behind, but he stops when his father holds his hand out in front of his chest.

The moment is most definitely between two men, and not between father and son.  “If John never listened to you, like you claim he doesn’t,” Dad says, “then he wouldn’t be in my office right now and I wouldn’t know he needed help.”

Gordon doesn’t respond, mostly because he’s not sure how.  He just looks at his father, who stares him down so intensely that Gordon fears there may be a hole burning straight through him.  “You just remember that, clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

There’s a pat on Gordon’s shoulder, a very clear dismissal, and then Gordon’s off again, ready to toss a barf bag in John’s direction and gather all of the information he needs in order to advocate for his big brother.  There’s the sound of his heartbeat in his ears, the whoosh of wind as he steps into the office, and just like that, Gordon and John are finally on the same side of the door.


	14. Chapter 14

It’s the last day of March, and he’s sitting in his father’s office. Virgil and Gordon are behind him—behind _John_ , and he’s in the t-shirt he’d worn underneath his blue oxford shirt. He’s been permitted to get dressed again after Jeff Tracy’s personal physician had poked and prodded and tutted at him, a cold stethoscope on his chest and back. Now the doctor’s been and gone, made her recommendations. Assured that John’s in no imminent danger, Jeff’s finished talking to her and re-entered his office, and apparently made up his mind about the sentence to be passed.

He doesn’t clear his throat, there’s no preamble. There’s just the facts about the future, as dictated by Jefferson Tracy. “You won’t be going back for the remainder of your term. I’ll make the appropriate excuses to the faculty. You’ll be spending the next year here, you’ll be an intern in the workshop. You’ll do what everybody and _anybody_ tells you, but nominally I’m putting you to work for my primary engineer. You won’t be paid. When you’re not here at work, you’ll be at the apartment in town, the doorman will have instructions to keep me apprised of your movements. You’ll have a curfew. You’ll see a doctor and a counselor and a psychiatrist if it’s deemed necessary.”

John’s porcelain-still, but his brothers are behind him, and he hasn’t been disowned, so the verdict gets a brief nod. “Yes, sir.” There’s a short, painful pause and then, “I’m sorry. I never meant things to…to go this far. Thank you for—”

“I haven’t done anything for you yet,” Jeff interrupts, and his eyes cut between Gordon and Virgil. Jeff sits back down behind his desk, leans back and tents his fingers to mark some degree of concession. The tone of the conversation changes, grows brusque, takes on the implication that what follows is an order and not a suggestion, “Dr. Leonne tells me you’re about fifteen pounds underweight. There’ll be a car waiting outside the lobby. Take your brothers out for breakfast and thank them properly.”

* * *

It’s the last day of spring break, and the three of them are on the sidewalk outside some highly recommended diner. There’ve been pancakes and waffles and French toast and eggs and bacon and sausage in alarming quantities. Juice and coffee and a milkshake at the end, because Virgil can’t go to a diner without getting a milkshake, apparently it breaks some secret law.

Virgil, despite being a pseudo-vegetarian and an art student, doesn’t really believe in karma. John doesn’t either, but when things have gone well—or haven’t gone as badly as they could have—he tends to pay it forward. Gordon believes in luck, and that if you’re lucky enough that your brother didn’t OD alone in an apartment on the other side of the country, you should probably make sure the balance of the universe knows you’re grateful. Gordon’s the sort of person who’ll leave a five hundred dollar tip. John’s the sort of person who’ll pay for the meals of every other patron in the place. Virgil’s the sort of person who’ll roll his eyes and mutter about how they’re both going to get walloped for charging a couple grand on a company card. He’ll get mirrored grins from his older and younger brothers.

There’s a sleek black sedan waiting to take John to the same penthouse apartment Gordon had trashed at the climax of his ill-fated post-Olympic rampage. The weather’s warm, balmy. John’s still pale, but Gordon’s pretty sure the west coast will do him some good, get him some sun, some Vitamin D. He and Virgil are waiting for a cab to the airport, and then Gordon’s gotta catch a train back up the coast to Santa Barbara. A couple hours. Visiting distance.

“Well,” Gordon breaks the silence, as Gordon almost always does, “I’m still waiting for my thank you, Johnny.”

John doesn’t say anything for a long few moments, as John almost always doesn’t when there’s a big question that needs answering. “I’m not sure I know how to thank you,” he admits finally, and he’s got a red and white starlight mint, still in the wrapper, turning over and over in his fingers. “I mean, it’s been made pretty clear that I, uh. Was killing myself. Kind of. I don’t know if I really _knew_ that or not, but—” He shrugs and he’s emotional, the way John almost never is. “That’s maybe something bigger than I know how to thank you for. So…so, I guess, sooner than thank you, I’d rather say I’m sorry. Because I never did, after I—for the way I acted back when it was you. Things’ve been weird, with you and I, and…I don’t know, Gordon. I didn’t mean a lot of what’s happened over the past few years.”

“I was an ass,” Gordon answers frankly. “I was young and stupid and I needed straightening out. Honest, John, knowing you were on the other side of the country all smug and superior and looking down at me—with a goddamn _3.9_ GPA—seriously, I wouldn’t have straightened out as well as I _have_ if it hadn’t been for the thought of _you_ , thinking I couldn’t. I get a real kick out of it when you’re wrong, John.”

This gets a faint smile from John and Virgil’s blatantly tearing up, trying to cover it up with the retrieval of sunglasses from the pocket of his shirt. “Well, you’re welcome, then. As far as you’re concerned, I guess I’m glad to be proven wrong. If it’s been helpful to you that _I’ve_ been an ass, then you’re very welcome. I’ll try and keep it up.”

Gordon scoffs, punches his brother lightly in the shoulder, but he’s grinning while he does it. “I’d say don’t strain yourself, but that might be one of the only things left that’s gonna come easy to you, J.”

“Fuck off, Gordon.”

But affectionately.

And it’s taken with a bright laugh. “Yeah, I gotta. Virgil too, once he’s done _crying_ , the big baby.” Gordon flicks his brother’s sunglasses off his nose and rolls his eyes. “C'mon, Virg, really? God, you are the sappiest bastard in the world.”

“You _guys_.” Virgil’s taller than Gordon and broader than John, and he gets both his brothers in a hug before either of them can move. There’s a faintly pained wheeze from John and a struggling grunt from Gordon, but eventually they both give in, and it’s back pats and ruffled hair all around. Virgil sniffles hugely as he lets them both go, and beams.

“Scott’s gonna _flip_ ,” he declares. “And he owes me three hundred bucks and that old Camaro Dad was gonna let him have. He said there was no way in hell I was gonna get you two to make up.”


	15. Epilogue

It's the last day of April, and John still can't make a decent cup of coffee. Brains has never had an assistant before, let alone the boss's son, and he _still_ doesn't know how to treat him. "A step above how you'd treat an indentured servant," Jeff had said, but this goes against Brains' nature. Especially when he's never even _had_ an assistant before.

Anyway, John's not what he'd expected. When Brains had been told to keep a tight rein on him, he had expected someone who needed—well, reining in. John's already pulled up so short that it's like he's barely there at all. He does what he's told, does it quietly, and if sometimes he seems a little vague and tired, Brains isn't hard on him for it. He's polite, he's deferential. Whenever Jeff's in the shop, John conveniently finds some errand that needs attending elsewhere. Brains thinks it's kind of a shame to see a son avoid his father.

* * *

It's the last day of May, and a transcribed page of shorthand has come back with the wrong math. Or, rather, it's come back with the _right_ math, but it's not the math Brains had done.

"H-hey. John?"

The redhead is doing something tedious in the name of optimizing Brains' digital filing system for the ongoing catalogue of blueprints and wiring diagrams that are produced on a daily basis. Really, Brains had just been running out of things for him to do. There's plenty of _real_ work to be done. Not a lot of busywork for the boss's dropout son. He's not gotten any better at coffee.

"Mm? Did you want coffee?"

Brains' ersatz assistant is less vague than he was, a bit more alert. That first month, Brains had started to worry that the younger man was _sick_ , somehow—nothing contagious, surely, but enough to explain how tired he seemed, how often he bowed out of work for unspecified appointments. John's clearly starting to feel better than he was—and Brains is starting to wonder if his sudden absence from college is explicable as burnout. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

"D-did you transcribe the math c-correctly on that last page of c-calculations I gave you?" Brains pushes his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and gestures with his slim holographic tablet, brings up an expanded view of the work he'd had John input for him. "I-it's only this isn't what I h-had written down."

John blinks at him and his answering shrug is a little sheepish. "Uh. Truth be told, Brains, I can't read the bulk of your writing. I've been picking out the numbers and the major operations and working out the rest myself."

Brains gapes at him for a moment. "You've been doing m-my _math_?"

John just shrugs again. "I like a bit of math."

* * *

It's the last day of June, and John and Brains are under a deadline. A serious deadline. Jeff has ordered the finalized schematic for the first of the Thunderbirds on his desk by morning. Production's supposed to start on the Fourth of July, auspicious and all-American.

And Brains has had to make exhaustive use of his not-so-new-assistant, since discovering that he's got a brilliant mind for the harder edges of science and engineering, and, as he says, that he "likes a bit of math." There are just a few final touches, just a few more things to make sure they have right. John's insistent that Jeff not know about his involvement at _this_ level of the project, and looking at his partner— _assistant_ , with his shirt sleeves rolled up, hunched over the table with his fingertips massaging his temples—Brains wonders if the stress is what John's trying to cover up.

"Y-you can t-take off for the night," Brains tells him, kindly. "I have a f-few more hours, there's no need for both of us to b-beat our heads against a wall. I'll work it out, John, you've done plenty."

"We're so _close_ though," John protests, and he thumps a fist on the lighted tabletop, where a blown up, holographic schematic of Thunderbird 1 hovers in mid-air. "I just... _god_. I just can't get my brain to focus. If I...if I could—"

This sentence isn't finished, and John gets up, leaves the room with his hand in the pocket of his jeans and an abstracted expression. Brains doesn't question him when he comes back, and they get it done.

* * *

It’s the last day of July, and they’re on the beach. It feels strange, tagging alongside the boss’ sons, but when Gordon had shown up, there had been no argument—John was going to the beach and, more importantly, he was getting out of that lab.  This was probably for the best, considering the fact that John had been on his seventh coffee, and Brains had decided he had better keep an eye on John during office hours, or else face the wrath of Mr. Tracy.

“And how did _you_ become an RA?”

“I’m cool, Johnny,” he says, just as he applies a big white glob to his nose.  “The kids like me.”

This is Brain’s first time meeting Gordon, but he would not have used the word _cool_ to describe the young man—and Brains is quite practiced in the art of qualitative data.  Loud, perhaps.  Quick.  Very, _very_ tan, but definitely not cool.

Polite, though.  Well, they’ve both got that at least.  “It’s Brains, right?” Gordon asks, but he doesn’t wait for an answer.  Brains is left with the distinct impression that he rarely does.  “I’m Gordon---s’it true you’re building my dad a rocket?”

“It’s not a rocket,” John says, but when he tries to find the words to describe it, he ends up amending his statement.  “Okay, so, it _is_ a rocket, but it’s not what you’re thinking. It doesn’t leave orbit.”

“Laaaame,” Gordon says.  “What’s the point of a rocket if it doesn’t go into space---you know what?  I just realized.  I don’t actually care.  Hey, Brains, build me a submarine, wouldya?  Monster of a thing.  Ten-thousand meters—no. _Hundred-thousand_ , just ’cause we can.”

“I actually c-can’t do that,” Brains tells the young man.  “The pressure within the cabin would be unb-bearable.”

Gordon waves a hand, as if being smushed to death like a drowning bug would be the least of his problems.  “Sure you could,” Gordon says.  “Skills like yours and a Harvard education, you can do anything.”

“I actually went to C-Cambridge.”

“No, sure, yeah.  But John’s got Harvard in his back pocket still—well, _some_ of it, anyways.”

This is the only thing Gordon’s said so far that seems to be worth any value, so Brains looks up at John—already burning under the sun—and takes a second look at the man who he had assumed must have attended _some_ sort of technological institute, if not _the_ technological institute.  “Harvard?” he says.  “N-n-not MIT?”

There’s a bitter laugh from the older brother and a tongue-in-cheek grin from the younger.  “No,” John confirms.  “Not MIT.”

* * *

It’s the last day of August, and the lab is _hot_.  Horribly, mercilessly hot, but John looks unaffected, surrounded in whirring fans and holograms of every different color.  The only hint of heat is the beads of sweat sitting below a drenched, deflated curl.  “What are you w-working on?”

John doesn’t look away from his screens.  “Just playing around with some of the code for the main jet.  I think if I can find a way to have a single control—”

“You code?”

There’s a wry smile on John’s lips.  “Used to.  I mostly worked on game theory back before college, but it’s pretty applicable here.  I just have to re-learn it, which is apparently easier said than done.”

John throws his hands to the sky, lets them fall in his lap.  This is a chance, Brains knows, to say the thing he’s been trying to say for the past month.  “It would p-probably be easier to learn in a formal setting,” he says, testing the waters.  “A technical school, perhaps.”

There’s a pause and then a, “Probably.”

“I have friends who lecture there, John,” he says.  “MIT would be happy to have you.  I could recom—”

“It’s not really my call, Brains,” he says, returning to his screens.

And that is the end of that.

* * *

It’s the last day of September, and Brains can’t remember the last time his heart had found home in his throat.  “Ahh, Brains.  Right on time—shut the door, shut the door.”

Brains does as he is told, mostly because he is about to do something he shouldn’t and when he is fired, he’d at least like a good recommendation for his next place of employment.  “Mr. T-Tracy.  So g-good to see you, sir.”

“Please, have a seat—”

“I’d prefer not to this time, sir.”

Brains has sat in the chair opposite Jeff Tracy many times in his life, musing about the Thunderbird project—discussing everything from big pictures to devilish details.  It’s a comfy chair.  Nice, but Brains would rather have a quick exit when Mr. Tracy tries to slug him.  “What is it, Brains?”

Well.  Now or never.  “I need a coder.”

Mr. Tracy smiles like Brains has just handed him a winning lotto ticket.  Or better, maybe, seeing as Mr. Tracy already has more than most lotteries could provide.  “That’s great news—I didn’t think you’d reach this stage so early.  I’ll get in touch with some old friends and see what kind of students are—”

“I want John.”

Until that moment, Brains would have thought it scientifically impossible for a smile that big to vanish that quickly.  “John?”  he says.  “John hasn’t coded since—”

He’s cut off with the sound of a tablet sliding across glass.  “This is a profile I’ve made up for him.  It c-covers the last six months of work—all of it is John’s.  I didn’t touch it.”

Mr. Tracy scans it as if he knows what he’s looking at.  Mr. Tracy is very good at that sort of thing.

“I took the liberty of calling some of _my_ old friends.  They are willing to start John in the winter semester.”  Brains gains momentum as he goes on.  “I d-don’t know what he did, sir, but you need to know that your son is wasting his potential by bringing me my coffee.”

* * *

It's the last day of October, and there's a Halloween party at Jeff Tracy's penthouse. Jeff Tracy is, predictably, absent. It's small,or small-ish, anyway, mostly a family affair. Family and friends, and apparently Brains is a friend to John now. He's quite glad to be.

Brains is the sort of person who's more confident when he's dressed as a storm-trooper, even if he's a little short for it. A few other engineers have been invited and the card games have been busted out. There are a handful of Gordon's school friends present, plus Gordon, in swim briefs emblazoned with stars and stripes, goggles, and a gold medal around his neck.

Gordon's the one who opens the door on Brains' arrival.

“Guess what I am,” he'd prompted, and Brains had been glad of his helmet to hide his blushing. Naked, is the answer. Very nearly naked. Tan and athletic and golden-boy blond, and with a ribbon around his neck. Gordon doesn't wait for an answer, anyway. “I'm a gold medal Olympian. It was not a difficult costume.”

“V-very nice. Are your other brothers going to b-be here?” Hopefully fully dressed.

Gordon's got a bright purple martini in one hand and he jerks his thumb over his shoulder. “Everyone but Scooter, because Scooter's in...oh hell, I dunno. Some desert somewhere. He's doing some test flight thing for Dad. Guess you know about that though. Uh...Virgil's waiting for Al at the airport, should be here soon. Oh! Yeah, I guess you don't know Allie or Virgil yet? C'mon, John's the one on the bar, get him to make you something while you wait. He's good at it, the nerd.”

Brains is furnished with an approximation of a Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster, but he drops it when the door opens and Virgil fills it, broad-shouldered and bearded, and putting Gordon to shame, even when fully-clothed and a lumberjack. There's something about a man with an axe, even if the axe is rubber and comically oversized.

John's the sort of person who has a full star-fleet uniform. Alan's the sort of person who's dressed as the Chekov to his older brother's Spock.

Brains doesn't have any siblings. But there's something a little bit heartmelting about the way Alan launches himself at his oldest available brother, and the way John's grin is affectionate and genuine. Brains is a little bit distracted by Virgil, especially when Virgil mentions he's an _engineering major_ , but he happens to notice John and Alan slipping out onto the balcony, to talk together privately. It must be nice, Brains imagines, to have brothers.

* * *

 

It's the last day of November, and Brains overhears a fight he's not supposed to.

The door of Jeff's office is open a crack, and Brains really shouldn't listen outside of it, but it's John's voice he hears, and he can't help but pause.

“---I'm aware I said it was your choice. But I had hoped you had better a better sense of discretion than to tell _Alan_ about why you're out here.  I would remind you that he’s only ever tried to imitate every other thing you’ve done, and the tacit implication that your behavior is even remotely acceptable won’t be allowed to stand. You’re expected to set an example. I would really rather you hadn't let your  _youngest_ brother down.”

Brains winces and is about to leave, but John's answer stalls him, confirms something he'd already suspected. There's a tight, restrained quality about the younger man's voice, and it's possible this is the only time Brains ever has or ever will hear real, genuine honesty from John, “I let Alan down _years_ ago,” he starts, “when I went to Harvard over MIT.”

“I _beg_ your pardon?”

“I let  _everybody_  down,” John asserts, voice rising, “when I didn’t tell you that Harvard wasn’t what I wanted. It was what  _you_  wanted, and I set the precedent for not bucking your expectations. Maybe I’ve failed everyone in plenty of other ways since then, but that was where I failed first, and it was where I failed hardest."

Well, Brains is just transfixed, now. Rude or not, about to be caught eavesdropping or not, he needs to know how this played out. And secretly, quietly, he's rooting for John, especially when he says, “And I'm _not_ going back. I'm not.”

Jeff's answering growl of frustration is audible, even at distance. Brains is shaking outside the door---he can't even imagine how John feels. “You have almost a complete degree. Your education has been _expensive_ , John, and I don't intend to have nothing to show for it.”

“What I had to show for it nearly _killed me_. That's what Alan needs to know. He needs to know I'm only human and I can fail.” John's pause is hard to read, until his voice follows it, a little choked. “But that _he_ doesn't have to.”

“John Tracy! This discussion isn't over---”

But the door swings open and John storms out, then slams it behind him and startles Brains, who yelps without meaning to, and startles John right back.

For a moment the pair of them stare at each other, John with his cheeks flushed and his eyes bright and Brains with a tablet clutched to his chest and no idea what to say.

“...Come on,” John says finally, with his eyes darting back to his father's office door as he makes for the elevator at a brisk walk. “Come on, we're getting drinks. I need...I need someone to talk to.”

* * *

It’s the last day of December and their father’s LA office is the kind of place that money can’t buy.  Money is a contributing factor, sure—a very  _large_ contributing factor—but this place costs more than just numbers on a bank statement.  It requires a reputation, demands a finely spun web of associates, and the leases are all signed with gold-trimmed fountain pens, engraved with the names of schools that only produce powerful people.

Their father’s pen had read  _Harvard University_.  John’s pens will not.

There’s a party going on downstairs, made up of the glitz and glam that the boys have long ago stripped off and untied.  The rooftop of their father’s LA office is not as nice as the rest of it, but it’s where John and his brothers disappear to on the nights when they grow tired of speaking to strangers who know their name and distant family who definitely don’t.

Brains has been invited to join them this year.  It feels like more of an honor than it actually is—feels like more of a party than any he’s ever been to.  Each brother has a drink in hand and a smile on his lips, composing their own music of laughter and chatter that’s so much more pleasant than anything that bleeds up from below.  “ _That’s_ your resolution?” John says, taking a sip from a glass that costs more than his first semester had.

Virgil’s answering laugh is the kind of deep chuckle that makes a cool night feel warm.  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to lower my CO2 emissions.”

“You’re an  _engineering_ major,” Alan points out, looking just a little bit older with a bottle hanging from his fingers, even if it’s only rootbeer.  

Virgil takes a sip from a beer that is most definitely not of the root variety, rolling his eyes.  “So I’ll  _engineer_ a new way to create energy.  I’m applying to graduate in a year or two—I’ll need a senior project anyways.”

“I think it’s q-quite admirable,” Brains cuts in, and Virgil raises the bottle to him, sending a thank you his way in the form of a smile.

It’s Scott who speaks next, the pilot for the craft that Brains has been building for a year now.  Thunderbird One, after all, had been Jeff Tracy’s New Year’s resolution.  “I agree,” he says.  “Admirable.  If Virgil wants to save the world, we’ll let him.”

Scott has just recently been brought in on the Thunderbirds project—two months ago.  Maybe three.  Brains suspects that he’s been thinking a lot about saving the world these days.  

“What about you, Johnny?”

Gordon and John sit across from each other, one with a glass of water, the other with the strongest whiskey the party had offered.  All eyes fall to John, but John’s eyes are firm on Gordon.  It’s a beat, two, before John digs into his pocket.

There’s a rattle.  There’s a hollow  _clink_ as a bottle is slammed against glass.  Everyone here knows what’s in that little aspirin bottle—one pill, not at all aspirin.  John looks at Gordon, downs what’s left of his drink, and says, “I’m going to space.”

It’s an unusually clear night for the end of December, but everyone looks up at the stars as if confirming that they’re still there.  Everyone, of course, except for John and Gordon.  “Space, huh?”

“Space,” John confirms.

“Gonna take a lot of work,” Gordon says.

“Sure is,” John replies.

“Probably a little bit of school.”

John’s eyes shift to Brains, but then flicker right back to his brother.  “I think I’ve got that part handled.”

“Didn’t have it handled last time, Johnny.”

“Do this time, Gordon.”

The classy, fluid music below plays on, but the easy chatter of the song on the rooftop has long since ended.  There’s a static sort of silent conversation, made up of words unsaid but still understood until finally Gordon is the one to snap. “Prove it.”

“ _What_?”

“Throw this pill off of that roof,” Gordon dares.  “That’s when I’ll believe you’ve got it under control.” 

The roof is quiet, John’s smile hinting at rebellion.  Brains has seen this look before and it almost always comes just after John is told he can’t and just before he proves he can.  It feels as though maybe the world has frozen over—like they’re stuck in that single point of time—but then it’s Virgil’s voice telling them all, “Ten seconds from midnight.”

John’s the first to stand, snatching the bottle back from the tabletop.  Then Gordon, close on his heel.  The others follow as John approaches the ledge and when the second youngest steals a glimpse of the time, the second oldest starts the countdown.  “Five.”

Gordon slings his arm around his brother’s shoulder.  “Four.”

Alan’s next, bouncing in that specific way that he only does when he’s around the people he most admires.  “Three.”

Virgil, smiling.  “Two.”

Scott.  “One.”

Fireworks pop and fizz against inky skies.  From below, there’s the cry of midnight.  When John throws the bottle, they all watch until they can’t see it anymore, and Gordon feels the weight roll off of John’s shoulders.  “Happy New Year, little brother.”

“Happy New Year, John,” Gordon says.  “Happy New Year.”


End file.
